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HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


THE    LIGHT   OF   DAY 


RELIGIOUS  DISCUSSIONS  AND  CRITICISMS 

FROM  THE  NATURALIST'S 

POINT  OF  VIEW 


BY 


JOHN   BURROUGHS 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

Cbe  fiibcrsite  press,  <£ambrib0e 


GEWEH/k 


Copyright,  1900, 
BY  JOHN  BURROUGHS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


WAITING 

Serene,  I  fold  my  hands  and  wait, 
Nor  care  for  wind,  nor  tide,  nor  sea  ; 

I  rave  no  more  J  gainst  Time  or  Fate, 
For  lo  !  my  own  shall  come  to  me. 

I  stay  my  haste,  I  make  delays, 
For  what  avails  this  eager  pace  ? 

I  stand  amid  the  eternal  ways, 

And  what  is  mine  shall  know  my  face. 

Asleep,  awake,  by  night  or  day, 

The  friends  I  seek  are  seeking  me  ; 

No  wind  can  drive  my  bark  astray, 
Nor  change  the  tide  of  destiny. 

What  matter  if  I  stand  alone  ? 

I  wait  with  joy  the  coming  years  ; 
My  heart  shall  reap  where  it  hath  sown, 

And  garner  up  its  fruit  of  tears. 

The  waters  know  their  own,  and  draw 

The  brook  that  springs  in  yonder  heights  ; 

So  flows  the  good  with  equal  law 
Unto  the  soul  of  pure  delights. 

The  stars  come  nightly  to  the  sky  ; 

The  tidal  wave  comes  to  the  sea ; 
Nor  time,  nor  space,  nor  deep,  nor  high, 

Can  keep  my  own  away  from  me. 


192643 


PREFACE 

IN  Central  Asia,  near  the  river  Oxus,  there  is 
said  to  be  a  famous  rock,  called  the  Lamp  Rock, 
from  a  strange  light  that  seems  to  issue  from  a  cav 
ern  far  up  on  the  side  of  the  mountain.  The  na 
tives  have  a  superstitious  fear  of  the  rock,  and 
ascribe  the  light  to  some  dragon  or  demon  that 
lives  in  the  cave.  Recently  a  bold  English  trav 
eler  climbed  up  and  investigated  the  phenomenon. 
The  light  was  found,  after  all,  to  be  only  the  light 
of  common  day.  The  cave  proved  to  be  a  tunnel, 
and  the  mysterious  light  came  through  the  rock 
from  the  other  side,  making  a  strong  glow  or  nim 
bus  at  the  mouth  of  the  dark  cavern. 

This  incident,  so  typical  of  much  that  has  taken 
place  and  is  still  taking  place  in  the  world,  espe 
cially  in  the  religious  experience  of  mankind,  has 
suggested  the  title  to  this  volume  of  essays,  in  which 
I  have  urged  the  sufficiency  and  the  universality  of 
natural  law,  and  that  most  of  the  mysterious  lights 
with  which  our  fears,  our  ignorance,  or  our  super 
stitions  have  invested  the  subject  of  religion,  when 
brought  to  the  test  of  reason,  either  vanish  entirely 
or  give  place  to  the  light  of  common  day. 

The  essays  for  the  most  part  were  written  twelve 
or  fifteen  years  ago,  when  the  author's  mind  was 


Vlll  PREFACE 

more  under  the  spell  of  these  and  kindred  subjects 
than  it  is  at  present.  They  are  reprinted  now  under 
the  belief  that  they  have  sufficient  merit,  literary 
and  other,  to  warrant  such  a  course. 

Written  at  different  times  and  for  different  occa 
sions,  it  is  perhaps  inevitable  that  they  should  show 
more  or  less  repetition.  Certain  channels  were,  so 
to  speak,  worn  in  my  mind  by  the  consideration  of 
these  matters,  and  that  a  like  experience  may  not 
befall  the  reader  I  advise  him  to  read  no  more  than 
one  chapter  at  a  single  sitting. 

My  polemic,  so  far  as  it  is  such,  will  be  found,  I 
hope,  aimed  more  at  theology  than  at  religion. 
Theology  passes ;  religion,  as  a  sentiment  or  feeling 
of  awe  and  reverence  in  the  presence  of  the  vastness 
and  mystery  of  the  universe,  remains.  The  old 
theology  had  few  if  any  fast  colors,  and  it  has  be 
come  very  faded  and  worn  under  the  fierce  light 
and  intense  activity  of  our  day.  Let  it  go;  it  is 
outgrown  and  outworn.  What  mankind  will  finally 
clothe  themselves  with  to  protect  them  from  the 
chill  of  the  great  void,  or  whether  or  not  they  will 
clothe  themselves  at  all,  but  become  toughened  and 
indifferent,  is  more  than  I  can  pretend  to  say.  For 
my  own  part,  the  longer  I  live  the  less  I  feel  the 
need  of  any  sort  of  theological  belief,  and  the  more 
I  am  content  to  let  the  unseen  powers  go  their  own 
way  with  me  and  mine  without  question  or  distrust. 
They  brought  me  here,  and  I  have  found  it  well  to 
be  here ;  in  due  time  they  will  take  me  hence,  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  will  be  well  for  me  too. 


PREFACE  IX 

We  are  like  figures  which  some  great  demonstra 
tor  draws  upon  the  blackboard  of  Time.  A  problem 
is  to  be  solved,  without  doubt ;  what  the  problem 
is,  we,  the  figures,  cannot  know  and  do  not  need  to 
know ;  all  we  know  is  that  sooner  or  later  we  shall 
be  sponged  off  the  board  and  other  figures  take  our 
places,  and  the  demonstration  go  on. 

That  we  have  served  a  purpose,  that  we  have 
positively  appeared,  that  something  has  been  ful 
filled  in  us  —  is  not  that  enough  ?  To  have  played 
a  part  with  other  figures,  and  to  leave  the  board 
clear  for  other  forms  that  are  to  embody  higher 
results  and  more  far-reaching  conclusions  —  is  not 
that  enough? 

APRIL,  1900. 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 

I.  A  RETROSPECT 1 

II.  FROM  THE  ARTIFICIAL  TO  THE  NATURAL  .        .  5 

III.  SCIENCE  AND  THEOLOGY 9 

IV.  NATURAL  VERSUS  SUPERNATURAL        ...  44 
V.  FAITH  AND  CREDULITY 71 

VI.    IN   CORROBORATION   OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY        .  86 

VII.   THE  MODERN  SKEPTIC 100 

VIII.  THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY   ....  115 

IX.  REASON  AND  PREDISPOSITION 132 

X.  RELIGIOUS  TRUTH 145 

XI.  POINTS  OF  VIEW 155 

XII.  GOD  AND  NATURE 163 

XIII.  A  HINT  FROM  FRANKLIN 172 

XIV.  MEDITATIONS  AND  CRITICISMS     ....  179 
XV.  SPIRITUAL  INSIGHT  OF  MATTHEW  ARNOLD  .        .  212 

XVI.  THE  DIVINE  SHIP  .  219 


THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 


A   KETROSPECT 

ONE  of  my  earliest  remembrances  is  seeing  and 
hearing  my  father  and  one  of  his  neighbors 
dispute  about  religious  doctrines.  They  had  both 
not  long  before  that  "  experienced  religion/7  and  had 
united  themselves  to  different  churches,  Jerry,  the 
neighbor,  to  the  Methodist,  and  father  to  the  old 
school  Baptist,  and  the  zeal  of  each  to  show  the 
other  the  errors  in  his  creed  was  very  great.  Time 
after  time  they  would  confront  each  other,  and  the 
long  winter  night  there  in  the  old  kitchen  would  be 
filled  with  the  din  of  their  earnest,  often  angry,  de 
bate.  I  think  Jerry  rather  forced  the  fighting,  as  I 
chiefly  remember  him  as  the  aggressor.  I  can  see 
him  yet  as  he  would  open  the  door  and  come  in  just 
after  supper,  always  very  much  occupied  with  the 
stick  he  was  whittling.  He  had  whittled  all  the  dis 
tance  he  had  come,  about  a  mile,  and  had  arranged 
his  argument  and  fortified  his  points  while  he 
whittled.  After  the  usual  commonplace  gossip, 
Jerry  would  gradually  approach  the  subject  of  the 


2  THE  LIGHT   OF  DAY 

difference  of  views  between  them,  and  begin  to 
quote  his  texts.  Trumps  called  for  trumps,  and 
father  could  match  every  one  of  Jerry's  texts  with 
one  of  his  own.  Jerry  was  the  more  ready  and 
smooth  of  tongue,  but  I  think  father  had  the 
greater  depth  of  religious  feeling.  I  can  see  him 
now  as  he  sat  with  the  Book  open  on  his  knees,  a 
tallow  dip  in  his  hand,  his  face  flushed,  his  voice 
loud,  hurling  Paul's  predestinarianism  at  his  neigh 
bor's  free  salvation  Methodism.  Back  and  forth 
the  disputants,  like  two  fencers,  fought  the  ground 
over.  Sometimes  one  clearly  had  the  advantage, 
sometimes  a  telling  text  gave  it  to  the  other.  Both 
looked  upon  the  Bible  as  the  infallible  Word  of 
God,  but  neither  took  it  in  a  "  soft  and  flexible 
sense/'  to  use  the  words  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  but 
in  a  rigid,  dogmatic  sense.  Both  were,  or  thought 
they  were,  God-fearing  men,  but  each  looked  upon 
the  religious  belief  of  the  other  with  the  utmost 
contempt.  The  sect  to  which  my  father  belonged 
was  especially  narrow  and  harsh  in  its  judgments 
of  other  sects,  particularly  of  the  Methodists,  who 
on  nearly  all  points  were  exactly  their  antipodes. 
The  name  of  Methodism,  with  its  cheap  and  easy 
terms  of  salvation,  always  made  father's  lip  curl  and 
his  nostrils  dilate.  He  would  not  have  been  caught 
in  one  of  their  churches  on  any  account  whatever. 
The  old  school  Baptists  look  upon  themselves  as 
the  elect,  the  chosen  few,  the  remnant  that  is  to  be 
saved,  and  they  treat  all  other  claimants  to  an  inter 
est  in  the  Celestial  City  as  pretenders.  It  was  to 


A  RETROSPECT  3 

bring  them  forth  that  the  whole  creation  groaned 
and  travailed  in  pain  all  the  ages.  How  they  snort 
at  divinity  schools,  Sunday  schools,  missionaries, 
protracted  meetings,  paid  and  educated  clergymen, 
prepared  sermons,  etc.  Only  he  who  is  called  of 
God  can  preach  (how  true !),  and  he  shall  take  no 
thought  of  what  he  is  to  say  until  he  gets  into  the 
pulpit.  Hence  the  sermons  I  frequently  listened 
to  in  my  youth,  that  were  supposed  to  be  the  direqt 
inspiration  of  the  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth,  were 
of  a  kind  to  make  Blair  turn  gray  in  an  hour.  But 
how  can  the  carnal  mind  understand  these  things ! 

I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  God  of  our  neigh 
bor  was  a  more  benevolent  and  merciful  God  than 
the  one  my  father  believed  in.  He  wanted  all  to 
be  saved,  whether  they  would  be  or  not,  while  the 
other  had  carefully  provided  that  only  a  part  could 
or  should  be  saved. 

The  disputants  of  course  never  succeeded  in 
changing  each  other's  views,  but  only  in  causing 
them  to  be  held  more  tenaciously.  They  both  as 
old  men  died  in  the  faith  they  had  early  professed. 
It  was  sufficient  unto  them  while  they  lived,  and 
at  the  last  it  did  not  fail  them.  Father  always 
spoke  of  his  approaching  end  with  perfect  assurance 
and  composure.  He  looked  upon  it  as  some  jour 
ney  he  was  about  to  make,  some  change  of  scene 
that  was  to  come  to  him,  and  which  need  give  him 
none  but  happy  anticipation.  I  remember  that 
once  while  visiting  him,'  a  few  years  before  his 
death,  he  told  me  he  was  reading  the  Bible  through 


4  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

again.  He  had  just  been  reading  the  story  of 
Elijah  and  the  false  prophets.  He  told  me  the 
story,  and  when  he  came  to  where  the  fire  came 
down  from  heaven  and  consumed  Elijah's  offering, 
his  emotion  overcame  him,  and  he  broke  down  com 
pletely.  He  no  more  doubted  these  things,  he  no 
more  doubted  the  literal  truth  of  every  passage  in 
the  Bible,  than  he  did  his  own  existence. 

How  impossible  for  me  to  read  the  Bible  as 
father  or  Jerry  did,  or  to  feel  any  interest  in  the 
questions  which  were  so  vital  to  them ;  not  because 
I  have  hardened  my  heart  against  these  things,  but 
mainly  because  I  was  born  forty  years  later  than 
they  were,  with  different  tastes  and  habits  of  mind. 
The  time  spirit  has  wrought  many  changes  in  men's 
views,  and  I  have  seen  the  world  with  other  eyes 
and  through  other  mediums. 


II 

FROM  THE   ARTIFICIAL  TO   THE   NATURAL 

TJIBOM  the  first  the  progress  of  mankind  has  been 
-*-  slowly  but  surely  from  the  artificial  to  the  nat 
ural,  from  the  arbitrary  and  chimerical  to  the  simple 
and  scientific.  Getting  himself  and  his  affairs  more 
and  more  into  natural  currents  and  following  them 
—  this  is  the  way  man  has  progressed. 

All  early  peoples  and  savage  tribes  have  ex 
tremely  arbitrary  and  artificial  notions  of  the  world 
of  forces  amid  which  they  live.  The  more  they  are 
immersed  in  brute  nature,  the  more  unnatural  will 
be  their  practices  and  conceptions.  People  who  live 
in  a  state  of  nature  are  the  victims  of  delusions  and 
superstitions. 

Nearly  all  the  early  conceptions  of  the  universe 
that  have  come  down  to  us  are  artificial.  The 
Mosaic  account  of  creation  shows  God  a  literal 
maker  and  builder,  Heaven  and  Hell  mere  places, 
one  above  and  the  other  beneath  the  earth.  The 
Ptolemaic  system  of  astronomy  shows  how  artificial 
was  the  beginning  of  this  science.  The  conception 
which  the  early  Christian  fathers  had  of  the  universe 
was  that  it  was  foursquare  like  Solomon's  temple, 
and  that  the  sky  was  something  fastened  to  the 
outer  edges. 


6  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAT 

The  ancient  cities  were  built  or  made  in  a  sense 
that  ours  are  not.  They  did  not  grow.  They  were 
deliberately  designed  and  built  as  we  build  a  house 
—  Jerusalem,  Tyre,  Sidon,  Carthage,  Athens,  Home, 
Paris,  London,  were  not  the  result  of  natural  laws 
and  forces,  working  through  commerce  or  the  spon 
taneous  movements  of  peoples,  as  are  modern  cities, 
but  the  result  of  arbitrary  power. 

All  political  progress  has  been  the  removal  of 
forced  and  artificial  relations  among  men,  and  the 
establishment  of  natural  relations.  Democracy  i» 
a  search  for  natural  leaders  and  the  rights  and  privi 
leges  that  belong  to  man  by  virtue  of  his  manhood. 
There  is  much  that  is  still  arbitrary  in  American 
}>olitics  and  sociology.  The  new  movement,  nation 
alism,  is  a  revolt  against  these  conditions. 

It  is  doubtful  if  any  of  the  unnatural  crimes  and 
vices  of  the  ancient  world  prevail  to  any  considerable 
extent  to-day. 

What  progress  in  medicine  from  the  artificial  to 
the  natural,  from  the  chimerical  to  the  scientific  ! 
The  early  remedies  were  nearly  all  fantastic,  like 
Indian  medicine  in  our  own  time.  The  Indian 
makes  a  tea  of  tickseed,  or  beggar's  lice,  to  im 
prove  the  memory  ;  it  will  make  things  stick  to 
you. 

The  doctrine  of  "signatures,"  which  at  one  time 
exercised  such  an  influence  on  medicine,  was  just  as 
rational.  The  plant  called  Jew's  ear  was  used  as 
a  remedy  for  diseases  of  the  ear,  because  its  shape 
was  somewhat  like  that  organ.  Liver  leaf,  I  sur> 


FROM   THE   ARTIFICIAL   TO   THE   NATURAL       7 

pose,  would  cure  liver  troubles  for  a  similar  reason. 
The  dried  flesh  of  the  python  was  a  great  remedy, 
also  powdered  mummy.  A  hundred  other  remedies 
were  equally  fantastic. 

The  first  or  earliest  conception  of  disease  was  that 
it  was  the  result  of  an  evil  spirit,  and  it  was  to  be 
exorcised  or  driven  away  by  some  religious  rite  or 
ceremony.  The  priests  were  therefore  the  first  doc 
tors.  The  spirit  theory  of  disease  was  long  since 
abandoned,  but  the  spirit  theory  of  insanity,  or  de 
moniacal  possession,  is  still  held  by  some  of  our  doc 
tors  of  divinity.  The  president  of  a  New  England 
college  not  long  since  stated  his  belief  in  this  doc 
trine. 

Up  to  near  the  end  of  the  first  half  of  our  own 
century,  our  system  of  medicine  was  as  artificial  as 
our  theology.  The  doctor  abhorred  nature  about  as 
much  as  the  priest  did.  The  latter  taught  that  man 
was  saved  by  grace,  not  by  any  virtue  or  excellence 
in  himself,  and  the  doctor  taught  that  disease  was 
cured  by  drugs,  not  by  any  recuperative  power  in 
the  body.  But  drugs  and  nostrums  are  in  our  day 
at  a  discount.  The  doctor  no  longer  aims  to  sup 
press  symptoms,  but  to  remove  causes.  His  chief 
reliance  is  upon  nature,  fresh  air,  water,  exercise, 
correct  habits,  proper  food,  etc.  He  does  not  try 
to  stop  a  fever  but  to  guide  it,  and  keep  up  the 
strength  of  the  patient. 

In  religion  the  progress  has  been  precisely  like 
that  in  medicine,  —  from  the  arbitrary,  the  fantastic, 
to  the  simple  and  the  natural ;  from  the  conception 


8  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

of  a  universe  the  sport  and  tool  of  supernatural  be 
ings,  to  a  world  inexorably  bound  by  the  sequence 
of  cause  and  effect,  or  like  that  from  the  Ptolemaic 
astronomy  to  the  Copernican  system.  That  the  early 
religions  were  fantastic  and  unreal  needs  no  proof. 
That  the  Christian  mythology  is  equally  fantastic 
and  unreal  is  not  so  generally  admitted.  The 
teachings  of  Jesus  himself  were  simple  and  natural 
in  the  extreme,  but  out  of  the  notions  which  were 
formed  about  Jesus  there  grew  up  a  religious  organ 
ization  which  was  equally  the  extreme  of  complex 
ity  and  artificiality.  For  seventeen  hundred  years 
mankind  were  under  its  sway  as  under  a  nightmare. 
It  perverted  nearly  every  natural  fact  and  paralyzed 
every  natural  instinct  of  the  heart.  In  the  Catholic 
church  this  nightmare  still  rides  mankind  ;  in  the 
Protestant  churches  its  spell  has  been  partially  bro 
ken.  Protestantism  is  more  or  less  a  compromise 
with  reason,  but  Catholicism  deliberately  puts  reason 
under  foot.  The  Catholic  reasons  very  astutely 
within  certain  limits,  but  he  is  tethered  and  cannot 
go  beyond  a  fixed  point.  His  reason  is  the  ser 
vant  of  his  faith  and  obeys  it  implicitly.  It  is  like 
a  muzzled  ferret  that  hunts  not  for  itself  but  for 
its  master ;  the  game  belongs  to  faith. 

The  priest  with  his  magic  and  the  doctor  with 
his  nostrums  have  had  their  day.  If  natural  good 
ness  will  not  save  a  man  he  is  lost,  and  if  his  innate 
powers  of  recuperation  will  not  cure  him  he  must 
die,  just  as  has  always  been  the  case. 


Ill 

SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY 

E  of  the  latest  phases  of  the  religious  thought 
of  the  times  seems  to  be  a  desire  to  get  rid  of, 
or  to  explain  away,  the  supernatural,  —  at  least  to 
reclaim  and  domesticate  it  and  convince  mankind 
that  it  is  not  the  irresponsible  outlaw  we  have  so 
long  been  led  to  suppose,  —  a  desire  nearly  as  marked 
in  the  theology  as  in  the  science  of  the  day.  Thus, 
the  Bishop  of  Exeter  (Dr.  Temple),  in  his  Bampton 
Lectures  of  1884,  on  the  "  Kelations  between  Reli 
gion  and  Science,"  upholds  the  belief  in  miracles, 
without  calling  to  his  aid  the  belief  in  the  super 
natural  as  the  word  is  commonly  used.  A  miracle, 
he  urges,  may  be  only  some  phase  of  the  natural 
not  yet  understood  ;  the  turning  of  water  into  wine 
by  word  of  command,  or  the  miracle  of  the  loaves 
and  the  fishes,  may  have  been  accomplished  by  the 
exercise  of  some  power  over  nature  which  is  perfectly 
scientific,  but  of  which  man  as  yet  has  imperfect 
control. 

And  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  in  his  "  Reign  of  Law,'7 
cautions  us  against  assigning  an  event  or  a  phe 
nomenon  to  the  agency  of  the  supernatural  until  we 
are  quite  sure  we  understand  the  limits  of  the  natural 
—  the  natural  may  reach  far  enough  to  include  all 


10  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

that'  we  have  commonly  called  the  supernatural. 
The  latest  considerable  attempt  in  this  direction  is 
furnished  by  the  work  of  Professor  Henry  Drum- 
mond  on  "  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual  AYorld,"  a 
work  which  undertakes  to  demonstrate  the  natural 
ness  of  the  supernatural,  or  the  oneness  of  religion 
and  biology. 

Butler,  in  his  "  Analogy,"  says  that  there  is  no 
"  absurdity  in  supposing  that  there  may  be  beings 
in  the  universe  whose  capacity  and  knowledge  and 
views  may  be  so  extensive  as  that  the  whole  Chris 
tian  dispensation  may  to  them  appear  natural ;  that 
is,  analogous  or  conformable  to  God's  dealings  with 
other  parts  of  his  creation ;  as  natural  as  the  visible 
known  course  of  things  appear  to  us." 

Such  a  being  seems  actually  to  have  appeared  in 
the  person  o::'  this  Scotch  professor.  The  "  whole 
Christian  dispensation  "  is  to  him  little  more  than 
a  question  of  experimental  science  ;  the  conversion 
of  Paul  is  as  natural  and  explicable  a  process  to 
him  as  the  hatching  of  an  egg  or  the  sprouting  of  a 
kernel  of  corn.  "  Religion,"  he  says,  "  is  no  di 
sheveled  mass  of  aspiration,  prayer,  and  faith.  There 
is  no  more  mystery  in  religion  as  to  its  process  than 
in  biology."  The  question  of  a  future  life  is  only  a 
biological  problem  to  him.  He  gives  physiological 
tests  by  which  a  man  may  surely  know  whether  or 
not  he  is  a  true  Christian.  The  characteristics  of 
life  in  the  organic  world,  he  argues,  are  four  :  namely, 
assimilation,  waste,  reproduction,  and  spontaneous 
action ;  the  characteristics  in  the  Christian  world  aro 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  11 

the  same ;  must  be  the  same,  else  the  law  of  con 
tinuity,  upon  which  he  has  built,  fails.  But  he 
wisely  refrains  from  applying  these  tests  in  detail  to 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  Christian.  He  says  :  "  The 
experiment  would  be  a  delicate  one.  It  might  not 
be  open  to  every  one  to  attempt  it.  This  is  a 
scientific  question  ;  and  the  experiment  would  have 
to  be  conducted  under  proper  conditions  and  by 
competent  persons." 

There  is  little  mystery  in  the  universe  to  a  mind 
like  Drummond's ;  or  if  there  is  any  mystery,  he 
knows  exactly  what  and  where  it  is ;  he  has  cornered 
and  labeled  it,  so  that  it  shall  give  him  no  further 
trouble. 

We  hardly  need  the  confession  which  he  makes 
in  his  preface,  that  his  science  and  his  religion  have 
got  so  thoroughly  mixed  that  either  can  be  expressed 
in  the  terms  of  the  other.  For  a  time,  he  says 
(while  he  was  teaching  the  two,  one  on  week  days, 
the  other  on  Sundays),  he  succeeded  in  keeping 
them  shut  off  from  one  another  in  two  separate 
"  compartments  "  of  his  mind.  "  But  gradually  the 
wall  of  partition  showed  symptoms  of  giving  way. 
The  two  fountains  of  knowledge  also  slowly  began 
to  overflow,  and  finally  their  waters  met  and  mingled. 
The  great  change  was  in  the  compartment  which 
held  the  religion.  It  was  not  that  the  well  there 
was  dried ;  still  less  that  the  fermenting  waters  were 
washed  away  by  the  flood  of  science.  The  actual 
contents  remained  the  same.  But  the  crystals  of 
former  doctrines  were  dissolved ;  and,  as  they  pre- 


12  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

cipitated  themselves  over  more  indefinite  forms,  I 
observed  that  the  Crystalline  System  was  changed. 
New  channels  for  outward  expression  opened,  and 
some  of  the  old  closed  up  ;  and  I  found  the  truth 
running  out  to  my  audience  on  Sundays  by  the 
week-day  outlets." 

It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  this  extract  does  not 
show  our  professor's  style  at  its  best,  but  rather  at 
its  worst.  At  its  worst  it  is  grossly  materialistic, 
and  goes  in  the  leading-strings  of  a  cheap  and  over 
wrought  analogy.  At  its  best  it  is  often  singularly 
clear  and  forcible,  even  flexible  and  buoyant,  but  it 
always  wants  delicacy  and  spirituality,  and  appeals 
to  the  scientific  rather  than  to  the  religious  sense. 
But  a  more  confused  mixture  of  science  and  theology 
probably  the  whole  range  of  printed  books  does  not 
afford.  The  positions  and  conclusions  of  the  latter 
are  constantly  uttered  as  if  they  were  the  demonstra 
tions  of  the  former.  And  this  is  the  obnoxious 
feature  of  the  book.  AYith  Professor  Drummond's 
theology,  as  such,  I  have  nothing  to  do,  having 
long  ago  made  my  peace  with  Calvinism.  It  is  only 
because  he  utters  his  theology  in  the  name  of  science, 
or  as  the  result  of  a  scientific  demonstration,  that  I 
arn  occupied  with  him  here. 

When  it  is  declared  by  a  college  professor  of 
Natural  Science,  as  it  virtually  is  in  this  book,  that 
in  the  laws  and  processes  of  the  physical  universe 
that  which  is  science  at  one  end  is  Scotch  Presbyte- 
rianism  at  the  other,  the  proposition  arrests  attention 
by  its  novelty  at  least. 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  13 

"  The  spiritual  world  as  it  stands,"  he  declares, 
"  is  full  of  perplexity.  One  can  escape  doubt  only 
by  escaping  thought.  .  .  .  The  old  ground  of  faith, 
authority,  is  given  up  ;  the  new  [ground],  science, 
has  not  taken  its  place."  It  is  his  purpose  to  give 
to  faith  this  new  ground  of  science.  Up  to  this 
time,  he  says,  the  spiritual  world  has  been  looked 
upon  as  outside  of  natural  law.  Evolution  and 
revelation  have  been  at  swords'  points  ;  he  has  not 
merely  made  peace  between  them,  but  he  clearly 
believes  himself  to  have  enlisted  the  forces  of  the 
former  under  the  banner  of  the  latter.  Science,  he 
says,  can  hear  nothing  of  a  "  Great  Exception/'' 
The  present  decadence  of  religion  is  owing  to  the 
fact  that  it  has  been  too  long  treated  as  the  great 
exception  —  cut  off  by  an  insurmountable  barrier 
from  the  natural  order  of  things.  It  is  now  found  by 
this  Christian  philosopher  to  be  as  completely  under 
the  dominion  of  natural  law  as  any  branch  of  physi 
cal  science.  What  Jussieu  and  De  Candolle  did 
for  botany  in  substituting  the  natural  system  for  the 
artificial,  what  Lyell  did  for  geology  in  getting  rid 
of  "  catastrophism,"  what  Newton  did  for  astronomy 
by  his  law  of  gravitation,  our  Glasgow  professor 
flatters  himself  (rather  covertly,  to  be  sure)  he  has 
done,  or  showed  the  way  to  do,  for  theology.  He 
has  introduced  law  and  order  where  before  were 
chaos  and  "  perplexity." 

All  this  sounds  as  promising  to  the  man  of  science 
as  it  must  sound  bewildering  and  discouraging  to 
the  theologian  —  because,  has  not  theology  always 


14  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

maintained  that  revealed  religion  was  superior  to 
reason,  and  that  the  natural  man,  with  his  profane 
sciences,  was  at  enmity  with  God  ? 

Sir  Thomas  Browne  speaks  as  a  theologian  when 
he  says  that  reason  is  a  rebel  unto  faith,  and  that 
"  many  things  are  true  in  divinity  which  are  neither 
inducible  by  reason  nor  confirmable  by  sense  ;  "  but 
he  spoke  as  a  man  of  science  when  he  said  :  "  I  can 
cure  vices  by  physic  when  they  remain  incurable  by 
divinity ;  and  they  shall  obey  my  pills  when  they 
contemn  their  precepts."  Indeed,  science  and 
divinity  occupy  essentially  different  points  of  view, 
in  many  respects  antagonistic  points  of  view. 

Science,  in  the  broadest  sense,  is  simply  that 
which  may  be  verified ;  but  how  much  of  that 
which  theology  accepts  and  goes  upon  is  verifiable 
by  human  reason  or  experience  ?  The  kind  of 
evidence  which  theology  accepts,  or  has  accepted  in 
the  past,  is  too  much  like  that  which  led  the  old 
astrologer  Nostradamus  to  predict  the  end  of  the 
world  in  1886,  because  in  this  year  Good  Friday 
falls  upon  St.  George's  day,  and  Easter  upon  St. 
Mark's  day,  the  very  latest  date  upon  which  Easter 
can  happen. 

Theology,  for  the  most  part,  adopts  the  personal 
point  of  view  —  the  point  of  view  of  our  personal 
wants,  fears,  hopes,  weaknesses,  and  shapes  the 
universe  with  man  as  the  centre.  It  has  no  trouble 
to  believe  in  miracles,  because  miracles  show  the 
triumph  of  the  personal  element  over  impersonal 
law.  Its  strongest  hold  upon  the  mind  of  the  race 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  15 

was  in  the  pre-scientific  age.  It  is  the  daughter  of 
mythology,  and  has  made  the  relation  of  the  unseen 
powers  to  man  quite  as  intimate  and  personal.  It 
looks  upon  this  little  corner  of  the  universe  as  the 
special  theatre  of  the  celestial  powers  —  powers  to 
whom  it  has  given  the  form  and  attributes  of  men, 
and  to  whom  it  ascribes  curious  plans  and  devices. 
Its  point  of  view  is  .more  helpful  and  sustaining  to 
the  mass  of  mankind  than  that  of  science  ever  can 
be,  because  the  mass  of  mankind  are  children,  and 
are  ruled  by  their  affections  and  their  emotions. 
Science  chills  and  repels  them,  because  it  substitutes 
a  world  of  force  and  law  for  a  world  of  humanistic 
divinities. 

Of  all  the  great  historical  religions  of  the  world, 
theology  sees  but  one  to  be  true  and  of  divine  ori 
gin  ;  all  the  rest  were  of  human  invention,  and  for 
the  most  part  mere  masses  of  falsehood  and  super 
stition.  Science  recognizes  the  religious  instinct  in 
man  as  a  permanent  part  of  his  nature,  and  looks 
upon  the  great  systems  of  religion  —  Christianity, 
Judaism,  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism,  the  polythe 
ism  of  Greece,  Rome,  and  Egypt,  etc.  —  as  its  legiti 
mate  outgrowth  and  flowering,  just  as  much  as  the 
different  floras  and  faunas  of  the  earth  are  the  ex 
pression  of  one  principle  of  organic  life.  All  these 
religions  may  be  treated  as  false,  or  all  of  them 
treated  as  true  ;  what  we  cannot  say,  speaking  for 
science,  is,  that  one  is  true  and  all  the  others  are 
false.  To  it  they  are  all  false  with  reference  to 
their  machinery,  but  all  true  with  reference  to  the 


16  THE   LIGHT  OF   DAY 

need  to  which  they  administer.  They  are  like  the 
constellations  of  the  astronomical  maps,  wherein  the 
only  things  that  are  true  and  real  are  the  stars  ;  all 
the  rest —  Ursa  Major,  Cassiopeia,  Orion,  etc.  —  are 
the  invention  of  the  astronomers.  The  eternal 
truths  of  man's  religious  nature  have  lent  themselves 
to  many  figures  of  polytheism  as  well  as  of  Christian 
ity  ;  these  figures  pass  away  or  become  discredited, 
but  the  truths  themselves  —  the  recognition  of  a 
Power  greater  and  wiser  than  ourselves,  to  the  law 
of  which  it  is  necessary  that  our  conduct  in  some 
measure  conform  —  never  pass  away.  Was  not 
Egypt  saved  by  her  religion,  and  Greece  by  hers,  as 
much  as  England  is  by  hers  ? 

Indeed,  the  question  which  it  is  not  safe  to  ask  of 
any  religion  is  just  the  one  we  are  prone  to  ask  first, 
namely,  Is  it  true  ?  A  much  safer  question  is,  Is  it 
saving  ?  That  is,  does  it  hold  men  up  to  a  higher 
standard  of  life  and  duty  than  they  were  otherwise 
capable  of  ?  Does  it  cheer  and  sustain  them  in  their 
journey  through  this  world  ?  Could  the  religion  of 
Greece  have  faced  the  question,  Is  it  true  ?  And 
yet  the  German  historian  of  Greece,  Dr.  Curtius, 
says  that  the  religion  of  Apollo  "  was  nowhere  in 
troduced  without  taking  hold  of  and  transforming 
the  whole  life  of  the  people.  It  liberated  men  from 
dark  and  groveling  worship  of  Nature  ;  it  converted 
the  worship  of  a  god  into  the  duty  of  moral  eleva 
tion  ;  it  founded  expiations  for  those  oppressed  with 
guilt,  and  for  those  astray,  without  guidance,  sacred 
oracles."  Can  historical  Christianity  any  better  face 


SCIENCE  AND   THEOLOGY  17 

the  question,  Is  it  true  ?  Did  all  these  events  fall 
-out  as  set  down  in  the  New  Testament  ?  Are  they 
set  in  their  true  light  ?  And  yet  who  besides  Pro 
fessor  Clifford  dare  say  that  Christianity  has  not 
been  a  tremendous  power  in  elevating  and  civilizing 
the  European  nations  ? 

Science  affirms  that  every  child  born  of  woman 
since  the  world  began  belonged  to  the  human  species, 
and  had  an  earthly  father  ;  theology  affirms  that  this 
is  true  of  every  child  but  one :  one  child,  born  in 
Judea  over  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  was  an  ex 
ception,  was  indeed  very  God  himself.  Theology 
makes  a  similar  claim  with  regard  to  the  Bible.  It 
affirms  that  every  book  in  the  world  was  written  by 
a  human  being,  and  is  therefore  more  or  less  fallible 
and  imperfect,  with  the  exception  of  one  —  that  one 
is  the  Bible.  This  is  the  great  exception :  the 
Bible  is  not  the  work  of  man,  but  is  the  word  of 
God  himself  uttered  through  man,  and  is  therefore 
infallible.  Science  simply  sees  in  the  Bible  one  of 
the  sacred  books  of  the  nations,  —  undoubtedly  the 
greatest  of  them  all,  —  but  still  a  book  or  a  collection 
of  books  embodying  the  history,  the  ideas,  the  re 
ligious  wants  and  yearnings  of  a  very  peculiar  peo 
ple  —  a  people  without  a  vestige  of  science,  but  with 
the  tie  of  race  and  the  aspiration  after  God  stronger 
than  in  any  other  people  —  a  people  still  wander 
ing  in  the  wilderness,  and  rejected  by  the  nations 
to  whom  they  gave  Christianity.  Science  knows 
God,  too,  as  law,  or  as  the  force  and  vitality  which 
pervade  and  uphold  all  things  ;  it  knows  Jesus  as  a 


18  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

great  teacher  and  prophet,  and  as  the  Saviour  of  men. 
How  ?  By  virtue  of  the  contract  made  in  the  Coun 
cil  of  the  Trinity  as  set  forth  in  the  creed  of  Cal 
vinism  ?  No  ;  but  by  his  unique  and  tremendous 
announcement  of  the  law  of  love,  and  the  daily 
illustration  of  it  in  his  life.  Salvation  by  Jesus  is 
salvation  by  self-renunciation,  and  by  gentleness, 
mercy,  charity,  purity,  and  by  all  the  divine  quali 
ties  he  illustrated.  He  saves  us  when  we  are  like 
him,  —  as  tender,  as  charitable,  as  unworldly,  as  de 
voted  to  principle,  as  self-sacrificing.  His  life  and 
death  do  inspire  in  mankind  these  things  ;  fill  them 
with  this  noble  ideal.  He  was  a  soul  impressed,  as 
perhaps  no  other  soul  ever  had  been,  with  the  one 
ness  of  man  with  God,  and  that  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  not  a  place,  but  a  state  of  mind.  Hence, 
coming  to  Jesus  is  coming  to  our  truer,  better  selves, 
and  conforming  our  lives  to  the  highest  ideal.  Was 
not  Paul  a  Saviour  of  mankind  also  ?  Without  Paul 
it  is  probable  that  Christianity  would  have  cut  but 
an  insignificant  figure  in  this  world.  He  was  its 
thunderbolt ;  his  words  still  tingle  in  our  ears. 

I  by  no  means  say  that  this  is  the  only  view  that 
can  be  taken  of  Jesus  as  the  Saviour  of  mankind  ; 
I  say  it  is  the  only  view  science  or  reason  can  take 
—  the  only  view  which  is  in  harmony  with  the  rest 
of  our  knowledge  of  the  world. 

What  can  science,  or,  if  you  please,  the  human 
reason,  in  its  quest  of  exact  knowledge,  make  of  the 
cardinal  dogmas  of  the  Christian  church,  —  the  plan 
of  salvation,  justification,  the  Trinity,  or  "saving 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  19 

grace,"  etc.  ?  Simply  nothing.  These  things  were 
to  the  Jews  a  stumbling-block  and  to  the  Greeks 
foolishness,  and  to  the  man  of  science  they  are  like 
an  utterance  in  an  unknown  tongue.  He  has  no 
means  of  verifying  them  ;  they  lie  in  a  region  en 
tirely  beyond  his  ken. 

Witness  the  efforts  of  the  Andover  professors,  in 
their  latest  manifesto,  "  Progressive  Orthodoxy,"  to 
give  a  basis  of  reason  to  the  dogma  of  vicarious 
atonement.  The  result  is  mere  verbal  jugglery.  To 
say  that  Jesus,  laying  down  his  life,  makes  you  or 
me,  or  any  man  capable  of  repenting  in  a  way  or  in 
a  degree  we  were  not  capable  of  before,  or  that  a 
man's  capacity  in  any  direction  can  be  increased 
without  effort  on  his  part,  and  by  an  event  of  which 
he  may  never  have  heard,  are  assertions  not  credible, 
because  they  break  completely  with  the  whole  sys 
tem  of  natural  knowledge. 

In  short,  the  truth  of  this  whole  controversy  be 
tween  science  and  theology  seems  to  me  to  be  this  : 
If  we  take  science  as  our  sole  guide,  if  we  accept 
and  hold  fast  that  alone  which  is  verifiable,  the  old 
theology,  with  all  its  miraculous  machinery,  must 
go.  But  if  there  is  a  higher  principle  by  which  we 
are  to  be  guided  in  religious  matters,  if  there  is  an 
eye  of  faith  which  is  superior  to  the  eye  of  reason,  — 
a  proposition  which  I  here  neither  affirm  nor  deny, 
—  then  the  whole  aspect  of  the  question  is  changed, 
and  it  is  science  and  not  theology  that  is  blocking 
the  way. 

But  the  attitude  of  Professor  Drummond  is  that 


20  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

there  is  nothing  true  in  divinity  that  is  not  true  in 
science,  or  at  least  in  harmony  with  science,  and  the 
main  purpose  of  his  book  is  to  demonstrate  this 
fact. 

The  pHoof  here  offered  is  nothing  more  than  the 
old  argument  from  analogy,  the  analogy  being  drawn 
from  the  principles  of  biology  instead  of  from  the 
general  course  of  nature,  as  with  Butler.  It  is  the 
assumption  that  these  biological  processes  or  laws  are 
identical  in  the  spiritual  and  physical  spheres  that 
furnishes  the  starting-point  of  the  book.  "  The 
position  we  have  been  led  to  take  up  is  not  that  the 
spiritual  laws  are  analogous  to  the  natural  laws,  but 
that  they  are  the  same  laws.  It  is  not  a  question 
of  analogy,  but  of  identity."  Still,  the  identity  is 
not  proved ;  the  analogy  alone  is  apparent.  In  the 
physical  sphere  science  often  recognizes  the  same 
laws  appearing  under  widely  different  conditions. 
For  instance,  the  process  by  which  animal  life  is 
kept  up  is  no  doubt  a  real  combustion,  identical  in 
kind  with  that  which  takes  place  in  the  consumption 
of  fuel  by  fire.  Lavoisier  and  Laplace  long  ago 
taught  us  that  there  are  not  two  chemistries,  one  for 
dead  bodies  and  another  for  living.  On  the  con 
trary,  one  system  of  laws,  chemical,  mechanical, 
physical,  everywhere  prevails.  Again,  there  are  few 
exact  terms  that  we  apply  to  objective  nature  that 
we  do  not  apply  upon  the  principle  of  analogy  to 
subjective  nature,  as  high  and  low,  interior  and  ex 
terior,  flexible  and  inflexible,  hard  and  soft,  attrac 
tion  and  repulsion,  etc.  Indeed,  our  whole  language, 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  21 

in  its  higher  ranges,  is  a  perpetual  application  of  the 
principle  of  analogy.  But  to  aver  that  physical  laws 
are  operative  in  the  spiritual  world,  even  in  the  spir 
itual  world  of  Calvinistic  theology,  is  quite  another 
matter,  and  is  to  take  a  leap  where  science  cannot 
follow.  Hard  and  inflexible  as  the  Calvinistic  hea 
ven  is,  it  is  doubtful  if  the  law  of  gravitation  reaches 
so  far,  though  our  professor  does  not  flinch  at  all  at 
this  assumption  (see  page  42). 

''Nature,"  he  again  says,  "  is  not  a  mere  image 
or  emblem  of  the  spiritual.  It  is  a  working  model 
of  the  spiritual.  In  the  spiritual  world  the  same 
wheels  revolve,  but  without  the  iron  "  (page  27). 
It  is  something  to  be  assured  that  the  iron  is  left 
out ;  the  wheels  are  enough.  Though  why  not  the 
iron  also,  since  we  are  still  within  reach  of  the  same 
physical  laws  ? 

There  is  nothing  more  taking  than  the  argument 
from  analogy,  but  probably  no  species  of  reasoning 
opens  so  wide  a  door  for  the  admission  of  error.  It 
is  often  a  powerful  instrument  in  leading  and  per 
suading  the  mind,  because  it  awakens  the  fancy  or 
stirs  the  imagination  ;  but  its  real  scientific  value, 
or  its  value  as  an  instrument  for  the  discovery  of 
truth,  is  very  little,  if  it  tyas  any  at  all.  The  fact 
of  the  metamorphosis  of  the  caterpillar  after  an  ap 
parent  death  into  a  winged  insect  may  lend  plausi 
bility  to  the  doctrine  of  the  soul's  immortality,  but 
can  it  be  said  to  furnish  one  iota  of  proof  ?  Indeed, 
to  a  mind  bent  upon  anything  like  scientific  certi 
tude  in  such  matters,  Butler's  whole  argument  for 


22  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

a  future  life  can  hardly  be  of  a  feather's  weight, 
because  he  seeks  to  prove  by  reason  or  comparison 
that  which  experience  alone  can  settle. 

Paul  reasoned  from  analogy  when  he  sought  to 
prove  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 
He  appealed  to  a  perfectly  natural  and  familiar 
phenomenon,  namely,  the  decay  and  transformation 
of  a  kernel  of  wheat  in  the  ground  before  it  gives 
birth  to  the  stalk  and  the  new  grain.  But  see  how 
the  doctrine  which  he  maintained  so  eloquently  has 
faded,  or  is  fading,  from  the  mind  of  even  orthodox 
Christendom !  Analogy  is  valuable  as  rhetoric,  but 
in  the  serious  pursuit  of  truth  it  can  be  of  little  ser 
vice  to  us.  When  employed  for  its  argumentative 
force,  it  proceeds  upon  the  theory  that  if  two  things 
be  compared,  a  matter  in  question  with  a  matter 
about  which  there  can  be  no  question,  and  the  former 
be  found  to  agree  in  its  rationale  with  the  latter, 
the  presumption  is  that  it  is  true  as  the  latter  is 
true.  But  this  mode  of  reasoning  is  of  no  value  in 
religious  matters,  because  here  we  shape  the  un 
known  from  our  knowledge  of  the  known,  and  the 
agreement  between  the  two  is  already  assured.  The 
world  of  myth  and  fable  bears  a  resemblance  more 
or  less  striking  to  the  real  world,  but  does  that 
afford  any  ground  for  our  accepting  the  myths  and 
fables  as  actual  facts  and  occurrences  ? 

Suppose  the  doctrine  of  Christian  conversion,  as 
expounded  by  Paul,  is  found  to  agree  with  certain 
well-known  and  universal  facts  of  human  life,  does 
that  prove  the  doctrine  to  be  true  ?  Or  does  it 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  23 

prove  that  Paul  predicated  his  doctrine  upon  the 
knowledge  of  these  facts  ?  Milton's  rebellious  an 
gels  in  their  warfare  against  the  hosts  of  heaven  may 
not  violate  one  rule  of  good  English  military  tactics, 
but  that  fact  would  hardly  be  counted  sufficient 
evidence  for  our  accepting  the  rebellion  as  an  actual 
historical  event.  Indeed,  when  our  theological 
friends  ask  us  to  accept  their  dogmas  on  the  ground 
that  they  are  no  more  unreasonable  or  inexplicable 
than  many  things  which  we  do  believe,  and  which 
all  the  world  believes,  they  usually  make  the  mis 
take  of  expecting  us  to  award  the  same  weight  to 
the  argument  from  analogy  that  we  do  to  proof  from 
experience. 

That  a  thing  is  mysterious  or  inexplicable  affords 
no  grounds  for  our  refusing  to  credit  it.  We  can 
not  explain  the  simplest  facts  of  our  lives  ;  we  are 
embosomed  in  mystery.  We  do  not  know  how  our 
food  nourishes  us,  or  how  our  sleep  refreshes  us, 
yet  we  know  that  they  do  nourish  and  refresh  us, 
and  that  is  enough.  What  a  mystery  that  an  ugly 
worm  should  become  a  gorgeous  butterfly,  or  that 
from  a  little  insensate  egg  should  come  a  bird  with 
all  its  powers  of  flight  and  song !  How  wonderful 
and  inexplicable  are  the  commonest  facts  and  occur 
rences  about  us !  Yet  we  know  that  things  do  turn 
out  thus  and  thus  and  not  otherwise,  and  we  know 
it  not  from  reason  but  by  experience.  We  know 
that  a  man  may  survive  the  amputation  of  his  arms 
and  legs,  but  do  we  know  that  he  can  survive  the 
amputation  of  his  head  ?  A  tree  or  a  cabbage  sur- 


24  THE  LIGHT   OF  DAY 

vives  the  amputation  of  its  head;  the  stump  will 
sprout  again,  why  not  a  man  ?  It  is  not  a  matter  of 
reason,  I  say  again,  but  of  experience.  "\Vhen  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  can  be  confirmed  by  the  same 
test,  then  it  will  be  just  as  easy  to  believe  it  true 
as  it  is  that  water  flows  or  is  solid  according  to  the 
temperature.  The  difficulty  with  the  theologians  is 
that,  while  they  so  often  appeal  to  our  experience 
in  establishing  their  premises,  they  at  once  go  be 
yond  our  experience  in  drawing  their  conclusions. 

The  analogy  upon  which  Professor  Drummond 
builds  so  confidently  will  be  found  comforting  and 
reassuring  to  those  who  are  already  of  his  creed, 
but  to  the  disinterested  inquirer,  determined  to  hold 
fast  alone  to  that  which  is  verifiable,  it  is  little 
more  than  a  clever  rhetorical  flourish. 

His  argument  in  a  nutshell  is  this:  There  are 
three  kingdoms,  —  the  inorganic,  the  organic,  and 
the  spiritual,  —  each  atop  of  the  other,  and  carrying 
the  same  law  into  higher  regions.  There  may  be 
other  kingdoms,  he  says,  higher  in  the  scale  than 
the  spiritual,  or  the  kingdom  of  God,  of  which  we 
as  yet  know  nothing.  But  of  these  three  we  do 
know,  and  with  these  we  have  to  deal.  The  law 
of  evolution  works  in  each  one  of  these  kingdoms 
up  to  a  certain  point,  when  there  is  a  break  and 
miracle,  or  an  outside  power  steps  in.  There  is  no 
passage  from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic  without 
a  miracle,  and  no  passage  from  the  natural  to  the 
spiritual  without  a  miracle.  Evolution  worked  in 
the  nebulous  matter  till  the  worlds  were  formed 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  25 

and  ready  for  life  :  to  introduce  that  life,  God  did 
directly  step  in  by  a  creative  act.  This  done,  evo 
lution  went  to  work  again  and  carried  forward  the 
process  until  the  series  of  sentient  beings  was  crowned 
by  man.  Then  evolution  came  to  the  end  of  its 
tether  again ;  to  reach  the  spiritual  kingdom  the 
intervention  of  a  miraculous  power  was  again  re 
quired.  A  man  can  no  more  become  a  Christian 
by  his  own  will  or  act  than  the  inorganic  can  become 
the  organic.  He  cannot  —  the  thing  is  simply  im 
possible  ;  and  our  author  brings  Scriptural  texts  to 
support  his  position.  This  leads  him  into  good 
old-fashioned  Calvinism,  and  good  old-fashioned  Cal 
vinism  he  advocates  and  seeks  to  clinch  with  his 
scientific  hammer.  Indeed,  his  aim  is  to  lend  the 
great  authority  of  science  to  this  all  but  outgrown 
creed,  and  he  evidently  flatters  himself  that  he  has 
established  the  truth  of  it  beyond  all  question. 
The  reader  soon  perceives  that  the  spiritual  world 
of  which  he  is  all  the  while  talking  is  not  the  spir 
itual  world  of  the  rest  of  mankind,  —  the  world  of 
spirit  as  opposed  to  that  of  matter,  the  world  of 
mind  and  consciousness  of  which  all  men  are  more 
or  less  partakers  by  virtue  of  their  humanity,  —  but 
the  spiritual  world  as  interpreted  by  a  certain  Chris 
tian  sect,  a  very  limited  and  a  very  recent  affair,  of 
which  the  mass  of  mankind  have  never  even  heard, 
and  in  which  the  sages  and  prophets  of  antiquity 
have  no  part  nor  lot.  The  curious  and  astonishing 
thing  about  the  argument  is,  not  the  bringing  for 
ward  and  the  insisting  upon  this  kind  of  a  spiritual 


26  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

world,  for  theology  has  long  ago  made  us  familiar 
with  this  claim,  but  the  bringing  of  it  forward  in 
the  name  of  science  and  substituting  it  for  the  spir 
itual  world  which  science  really  recognizes.  In  fol 
lowing  his  argument  one  constantly  feels  the  ground 
disappearing  beneath  him  or  before  him.  His  spir 
itual  kingdom  does  not  belong  to  the  same  order  of 
fact  as  the  other  two  :  it  is  not  a  link,  or  a  step  in 
a  natural  series,  but  a  domain  by  itself  entirely 
apart  from  human  reason  or  experience.  In  clapping 
it  on  top  of  the  physical  universe  in  the  way  it  has 
been  done  here,  and  claiming  that  its  position  there 
is  logical  or  scientific,  is  to  do  violence  to  common 
sense.  Its  position  there  is  forced  and  arbitrary. 
In  the  order  of  nature  what  goes  atop  of  the  animal 
world  is  the  world  of  consciousness,  the  world  of 
mind  and  spirit,  which  attains  to  its  full  flowering 
in  man.  This  is  no  limited  or  accidental  world, 
thrust  upon  the  few,  and  denied  to  the  many,  but 
a  world  which  belongs  to  the  natural  order  of  the 
universe.  The  passage  to  it  from  the  animal  is  so 
gradual  that  science  cannot  say  where  the  one  ends 
and  the  other  begins.  In  the  same  manner  the  ani 
mal  fades  into  the  vegetable,  and  the  vegetable  into 
the  mineral.  There  are  no  breaks,  there  are  no 
gulfs  fixed.  "  There  exists  no  insurmountable 
chasm  between  organic  and  inorganic  nature,"  says 
Haeokel,  speaking  for  the  most  thorough  science  of 
his  times.  Huxlry  and  Tymlall  and  the  leading 
French  scientists  have  reacl-ed  the  same  conclusion. 
The  organic  and  the  inorjinic  are  composed  of  the 


SCIENCE  AND  THEOLOGY  27 

same  elements ;  their  differences  arise  solely  from 
the  different  chemical  combination  of  these  elements, 
a  combination  so  peculiar  and  complex  that  Science 
has  not  yet  been  able  to  reproduce  it  in  her  labora 
tory.  But  the  fact  that  spontaneous  generation  has 
not  yet  taken  place  under  the  highly  artificial  con 
ditions  imposed  by  experimental  chemistry  proves 
what  ?  Proves  only  that  it  has  not  yet  taken  place, 
that  science  with  its  limited  means  and  brief  space 
of  time  has  not  yet  accomplished  that  which  must 
have  occurred  under  vastly  different  conditions  in 
the  abysm  of  geological  time,  and  in  the  depths  of 
the  primordial  seas.  Science  starts  with  matter  and 
with  force  ;  back  of  these  it  does  not  go  ;  more  than 
these  it  does  not  require.  To  account  for  them,  or 
to  seek  to  account  for  them,  is  unscientific,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  no  such  accounting  can  be  veri 
fied.  Out  of  the  potencies  of  matter  itself  science 
traces  the  evolution  of  the  whole  order  of  visible 
things.  Theology  may  step  in  and  assume  to  know 
all  that  science  leaves  unsaid,  but  in  doing  so  let 
it  not  assume  to  speak  with  the  consent  and  the 
authority  of  its  great  rival. 

In  the  light  of  the  most  advanced  biological  sci 
ence,  organic  and  inorganic  appear  but  relative  terms, 
like  heat  and  cold.  There  are  all  degrees  of  heat, 
and  there  are  probably  all  degrees  of  life.  There  are 
probably  degrees  of  life  too  low  in  the  scale  for  our 
discernment,  just  as  there  is  heat  where  our  senses 
report  only  cold.  If  there  are  degrees  of  conscious 
ness,  why  may  there  not  be  degrees  of  life  ?  The 


28  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

child  grows  gradually  into  consciousness,  just  as  the 
race  has  grown  gradually  into  consciousness.  Dare 
we  affirm  that  in  either  case  the  leap  from  the  un 
conscious  to  the  conscious  was  or  is  suddenly  made  '? 
No  more  dare  we  affirm  that  the  leap  from  the  in 
organic  to  the  organic  was  suddenly  made.  Is  the 
crystal  absolutely  dead  ?  See  it  shape  itself  ac 
cording  to  a  special  plan ;  see  how  sensitive  it  is  to 
the  surrounding  medium ;  see  it  grow  when  the 
proper  food  is  given  it,  so  to  speak.  Pasteur  has 
noted  that  it  cicatrizes  or  repairs  itself  when 
wounded.  When  placed  in  the  fluid  of  crystalliza 
tion,  the  injured  part  sears  over  and  gradually  re 
gains  its  original  shape.  The  most  advanced  science 
of  our  time  does  not  regard  life  as  a  special  and 
separate  principle,  a  real  entity  which  has  been  added 
to  matter,  but  as  a  mode  in  which  certain  physical 
forces  manifest  themselves,  just  as  heat  is  not  a 
thing  of  itself,  but  a  mode  of  motion. 

"Mechanical,  chemical,  and  physical  forces  are 
the  only  efficient  agents  in  the  living .  organism," 
at  least  the  only  ones  which  science  can  recognize, 
and  these  forces  are  the  same  in  both  the  organic 
and  the  inorganic  worlds. 

Behold  a  fire,  a  conflagration ;  see  it  leap  and 
climb  ;  witness  its  fierce  activity,  its  all-devouring 
energies !  How  like  a  thing  of  life  it  is !  Is 
there  a  unique  and  original  principle  at  work  here, 
the  principle  or  spirit  of  fire,  a  thing  apart  from  the 
intense  chemical  activity  which  it  occasions  ?  The 
ancient  observers  believed  so,  and  it  is  a  pretty 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  29 

fancy,  but  science  recognizes  in  it  only  another  of 
the  protean  forms  in  which  force  clothes  itself. 
We  can  evoke  fire  without  the  aid  of  fire,  but  the 
fire  called  life  man  has  not  yet  been  able  so  to 
evoke  —  probably  never  will  be  able.  The  nearest 
he  has  as  yet  come  to  it  is  in  producing  many  of 
the  organic  compounds  synthetically  from  inorganic 
compounds  —  a  triumph  a  few  years  ago  thought  to 
be  impossible. 

The  barrier,  then,  between  the  organic  and  the 
inorganic,  upon  which  the  scheme  of  theology  of 
Professor  Drummond  turns,  is  by  no  means  a  fixed 
conclusion  of  science.  Science  believes  that  the 
potencies  or  properties  of  life  are  on  the  inorganic 
side,  and  that  the  passage  has  actually  taken  place 
in  the  past  or  may  still  take  place  in  the  present. 

In  working  out  his  general  thesis,  our  author 
takes  courage  from  the  example  of  Walter  Bagehot, 
whose  physical  politic,  he  says,  is  but  the  extension 
of  natural  law  to  the  political  world ;  and  from  the 
example  of  Herbert  Spencer,  whose  biological  soci 
ology  is  but  the  application  of  natural  law  to  the 
social  world.  But  the  political  world  of  Walter 
Bagehot  and  the  social  world  of  Herbert  Spencer  are 
worlds  which  science  recognizes ;  they  fall  within 
its  pale ;  their  existence  is  never  disputed.  But 
the  spiritual  world  of  Professor  Drummond  is  a 
world  of  which  science  can  know  nothing.  It  is  to 
science  just  as  fanciful  or  unreal  as  the  spiritual 
world  of  Grecian  or  Scandinavian  mythology,  or  as 
the  fairy  world  of  childhood. 


30  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

It  is  true  the  world  of  art,  the  world  of  genius, 
the  world  of  literature,  is  a  very  select  and  limited 
affair  too ;  but  does  anybody  ever  call  the  reality  of 
it  in  question  ?  Do  we  want  proof  that  Shakespeare 
and  Milton  are  poets  ?  But  science  does  want  proof, 
if  the  matter  comes  to  that,  that  the  typical  Puritan 
has  the  favor  of  any  spiritual  powers  not  known  to 
the  rest  of  mankind  —  not  known  and  equally  acces 
sible  to  Zeno  or  Plutarch  or  Virgil  or  Marcus 
Aurelius. 

It  is  just  these  exceptions,  these  departures  from 
the  established  course  of  nature,  that  the  natural 
philosopher  is  skeptical  about.  If  an  obscure  event, 
which  happened  in  Judea  over  eighteen  hundred 
years  ago,  added  a  new  kingdom  to  nature,  or  in 
augurated  a  new  or  higher  order  of  spiritual  truths 
impossible  before  that  time,  impossible  to  Plato  or 
Plutarch,  he  wants  the  fact  put  in  harmony  with 
the  rest  of  our  knowledge  of  the  universe.  It  is 
commonly  believed  that  the  course  of  nature  is  in 
dependent  of  historical  events,  and  that  the  ways  of 
God  to  man  from  the  beginning  have  been  just 
what  they  are  to-day. 

What  perpetually  irritates  the  disinterested  reader 
of  Drummond's  book  is  the  assumption  everywhere 
met  with  that  the  author  is  speaking  with  the  au 
thority  of  science,  when  he  is  only  echoing  the  con 
clusions  of  theology.  Hear  him  on  the  differences 
between  the  Christian  and  the  non-Christian :  — 

"The  distinction  between  them  is  the  same  as 
that  between  the  organic  and  the  inorganic,  the 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  31 

living  and  the  dead.  What  is  the  difference  be 
tween  a  crystal  and  an  organism,  a  stone  and  a 
plant  ?  They  have  much  in  common.  Both  are 
made  of  the  same  atoms.  Both  display  the  same 
properties  of  matter.  Both  are  subject  to  the  same 
physical  laws.  Both  may  be  very  beautiful.  But 
besides  possessing  all  that  the  crystal  has,  the  plant 
possesses  something  more,  —  a  mysterious  something 
called  life.  This  life  is  not  something  which  existed 
in  the  crystal  only  in  a  less  developed  form.  There 
is  nothing  at  all  like  it  in  the  crystal.  .  .  .  When 
from  vegetable  life  we  rise  to  animal  life,  here  again 
we  find  something  original  and  unique  —  unique  at 
least  as  compared  with  the  animal.  From  animal 
life  we  ascend  again  to  spiritual  life.  And  here 
also  is  something  new,  something  still  more  unique. 
He  who  lives  the  spiritual  life  has  a  distinct  kind 
of  life  added  to  all  the  other  phases  of  life  which 
he  manifests,  —  a  kind  of  life  infinitely  more  dis 
tinct  than  is  the  active  life  of  a  plant  from  the  iner 
tia  of  a  stone.  .  .  .  The  natural  man  belongs  essen 
tially  to  this  present  order  of  things.  He  is  endowed 
simply  with  a  higher  quality  of  the  natural  animal 
life.  But  it  is  life  of  so  poor  a  quality  that  it  is 
not  life  at  all.  '  He  that  hath  not  the  Son  hath 
not  life  ;  but  he  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life '  —  a 
new  and  distinct  and  supernatural  endowment.  He 
is  not  of  this  world,  he  is  of  the  timeless  state  of 
eternity.  It  doth  not  yet  appear  ivhat  he  shall 
be." 

In  the  chapter  on  Classification  this  distinction 


THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

is  further  elaborated,  and  a  picture  drawn  of  the 
merely  moral  or  upright  man,  that  leaves  him  very 
low  down  indeed  in  the  scale  of  life,  when  contrasted 
with  the  Scotch  Presbyterian.  He  is  still  a  stone 
compared  with  the  plant.  "  Here,  for  example,  are 
two  characters,  pure  and  elevated,  adorned  with 
conspicuous  virtues,  stirred  by  lofty  impulses,  and 
commanding  a  spontaneous  admiration  from  all  who 
look  upon  them  —  may  not  this  similarity  of  out 
ward  form  be  accompanied  by  a  total  dissimilarity 
of  inward  nature  ?  "  And  he  adds  that  the  differ 
ence  is  really  as  profound  and  basal  as  that  between 
the  organic  and  the  inorganic. 

As  rhetoric  or  as  theology,  one  need  care  little 
for  all  this ;  but  when  it  is  uttered  as  science,  as  it 
is  here,  it  is  quite  another  matter.  When  it  is  de 
clared  that  a  man,  say  like  Emerson,  in  compari 
son  with  the  general  of  the  Salvation  Army,  is  a 
crystal  compared  to  a  flower,  and  the  declaration  is 
made  in  the  name  and  with  the  authority  of  science, 
it  is  time  to  protest.  In  fact,  to  aver  that  the  fin 
est  specimens  of  the  race  who  lived  before  the  ad 
vent  of  Christianity,  or  who  have  lived  since,  and 
honestly  withheld  their  assent  from  the  Calvinistic 
interpretation  of  it,  came  short  of  the  higher  life 
and  the  true  destiny  of  man,  as  much  as  the  stone 
comes  short  of  the  plant,  may  do  as  the  personal 
opinion  of  a  Scotch  professor,  but  to  announce  such 
an  opinion  as  the  result  of  'a  scientific  demonstration 
is  an  insult  to  science  and  an  outrage  upon  human 
nature. 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  33 

It  is  told  that  a  celebrated  wit  once  silenced  an 
old  Billingsgate  fishwife  by  calling  her  a  parallelo 
gram.  Professor  Drummond  calls  the  merely  moral 
man  a  hexagon  (see  chapter  on  Classification),  and 
there  is  just  as  much  science  in  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other.  It  is  a  mere  calling  of  names,  and  the  re 
tort  in  both  cases  is  likely  to  be,  "  You  're  another  !  " 
That  there  is  a  fundamental  difference  between  the 
crystal  and  the  cell  we  all  know,  but  to  call  Plato 
or  Marcus  Aurelius  a  crystal,  and  Luther  or  Calvin 
a  living  organism,  is  purely  gratuitous.  To  science 
Paul  is  no  more  alive  than  Plato.  Both  were  mas 
ter  spirits,  both  made  a  deep  and  lasting  impression 
upon  the  world,  both  are  still  living  forces  in  the 
world  of  mind  to-day.  Theology  may  see  a  funda 
mental  difference  between  the  two,  but  science  does 
not.  Theology  may  attach  its  own  meanings  to  the 
terms  life  and  death,  but  science  can  attach  but  one 
meaning  to  them,  —  the  meaning  they  have  in  the 
universal  speech  of  mankind.  Theology  may  say  that 
"  he  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life,  and  he  that  hath 
not  the  Son  hath  not  life  ;  "  but  is  the  statement  any 
more  scientific  than  it  would  be  to  say,  "  He  that 
hath  Confucius  hath  life,  and  he  that  hath  not  Con 
fucius  hath  not  life  "  ?  If  Christ  was  the  life  in  a 
biological  and  verifiable  sense,  then  the  proposition 
would  carry  its  own  proof.  But  the  kind  of  life 
here  referred  to  is  a  kind  entirely  unknown  to  sci 
ence.  The  language,  like  the  language  of  so  much 
else  in  the  New  Testament,  is  the  language  of  mys 
ticism,  and  is  not  capable  of  verification  by  any  pro- 


34  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

cess  known  to  science.  The  facts  that  confirm  it, 
if  facts  there  are,  lie  entirely  outside  of  the  domain 
of  scientific  inquiry,  direct  or  indirect. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  and  within  the  range  of 
scientific  demonstration,  the  difference  between  the 
Christian  and  the  non-Christian,  between  the  moral 
and  the  orthodox  citizen,  in  our  day,  is  as  little  as 
the  difference  between  Whig  and  Tory,  or  Republi 
can  and  Democrat  —  a  difference  of  belief  and  of 
outward  observance,  and  in  no  sense  a  fundamental 
difference  of  life  and  character.  Is  it  probable  that 
a  scientific  commission  could  establish  any  essential 
differences,  say  between  Professor  Tyndall  and  Pro 
fessor  Drummond,  any  differences  which  the  latter 
owed  to  his  orthodoxy  that  enhanced  his  worth  as  a 
man,  as  a  citizen,  as  a  father,  as  a  husband,  or  as  a 
man  of  trust  and  responsibility,  over  and  above  the 
former  ?  It  would  probably  be  found  that  both 
possessed  "  that  inbred  loyalty  unto  virtue  "  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  which  certainly  is  the  main  matter 
in  this  world,  and  more  's  the  pity  if  it  is  not  the 
main  matter  in  the  next. 

Our  professor's  argument  from  analogy  breaks 
down  on  nearly  every  page  by  his  confounding  the 
particular  with  the  universal,  and  substituting  the 
exceptional,  the  hypothetical,  for  the  natural  and 
provable.  The  error  is  the  same  as  if  Bishop 
Butler  had  sought  to  prove  from  the  general  course 
of  nature,  such  as  the  changing  of  worms  into  flies, 
the  hatching  of  eggs  into  birds,  the  passage  of  in 
fancy  into  manhood,  etc.,  that  some  particular  men 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  35 

were  endowed  with  immortal  souls  and  lived  after 
the  dissolution  of  the  body.  But  the  bishop  made 
the  two  sides  of  his  equation  equal ;  he  started  with 
the  universal  and  he  ended  with  the  universal,  and 
claimed  immortality  for  all  men.  Drummond,  on 
the  other  hand,  seeks  to  prove  a  particular  and  ex 
ceptional,  fact  by  its  analogy  to  a  general  law  of 
nature.  In  his  chapter  on  Conformity  to  Type,  the 
leading  idea  is  that  every  kind  of  organism  con 
forms  to  the  type  of  that  which  begat  it  :  the  oak 
to  the  oak,  the  bird  to  the  bird,  etc.  An  incontro 
vertible  statement,  certainly.  Now  what  is  the 
analogy  ?  This,  namely,  that  all  Christians  con 
form  to  the  Christ-type,  and  are  not  begotten  by 
themselves,  but  by  Christ.  Where  is  the  force  of 
the  analogy  ?  One  fails  to  see  it,  because  the  argu 
ment  proceeds  from  the  universal  to  the  particular 
again  ;  a  principle  which  is  true  of  all  birds,  and  all 
oaks,  is  true  of  only  some  men.  All  men  are  not 
Christians.  Moreover,  Professor  Drummond  urges 
that  they  cannot  all  be  Christians,  and  that  the 
scheme  of  Christianity  does  not  require  or  intend 
that  they  shall  all  be  Christians. 

To  give  the  analogy  force  requires  that  the  law 
be  as  general  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other. 
Every  bird  is  a  bird  unconditionally  ;  it  is  born  a 
bird  and  dies  a  bird,  and  can  be  nothing  else  but  a 
bird  ;  and  to  show  the  same  universal  law  of  con 
formity  to  type,  working  in  both  cases,  every  man 
must  be  a  Christian  on  the  same  terms :  it  must  be 
shown  to  be  the  law  of  his  being  from  which  there 


36  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

is  no  escape.  If  one  man  fails  to  become  .a 
Christian,  the  law  is  broken  as  truly  as  if  a  bird's 
egg  were  to  hatch  out  a  mouse,  or  an  acorn  to  pro 
duce  a  cabbage.  But  in  the  scientific  Calvinism  of 
Professor  Drummond,  every  bird  is  not  a  bird  ;  only 
one  here  and  there  has  the  bird-form  thrust  upon  it. 
The  number  of  Christians  is  of  necessity  very 
limited.  Salvation,  and  hence  immortality,  are  for 
the  few,  not  for  the  many.  Our  Christian  philoso 
pher  is  actually  driven  by  the  necessities  of  his 
argument  into  maintaining  the  truth  of  a  special  and 
limited  immortality.  Immortality  is  not  for  the 
whole  human  race,  any  more  than  the  principle  of 
life  is  for  the  whole  inorganic  kingdom. 

"  Some  mineral,  but  not  all,  become  vegetable  ; 
some  vegetable,  but  not  all,  become  animal ;  some 
animal,  but  not  all,  become  human  ;  some  human, 
but  not  all,  become  divine."  But  the  principle  is 
the  same,  as  if  all  mineral  did  become  vegetable,  etc. 
It  may  become  vegetable,  probably  in  its  turn  will 
become  vegetable ;  there  is  no  partiality  or  prefer 
ence  on  the  part  of  Nature.  The  same  in  the 
higher  spheres.  All  men  are  approximately  divine, 
such  men  as  Plato  and  Paul  vastly  more  so,  of 
course,  than  the  great  mass  of  men  ;  but  the  differ 
ence  is  one  of  degree,  not  of  kind,  like  the  difference 
between  the  half  fliers  and  the  perfect  fliers  among 
the  birds.  Yet  Professor  Drummond  dare  affirm 
that  certain  members  of  a  species  are  endowed  with 
a  kind  of  life  which  is  denied  to  certain  other  mem 
bers  of  the  same  species,  and  he  makes  this  declara- 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  37 

tion,  not  in  the  name  of  theology,  but  in  the  name 
of  science ! 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  seek  to  belittle  or  discredit 
the  true  Christian  life  of  any  man  or  woman,  —  the 
life  that  conforms,  however  imperfectly,  to  the 
example  set  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

What  I  urge  is  that  the  natural  philosopher  is 
bound  to  consider  such  a  life  as  not  contingent  upon 
a  certain  belief,  or  the  acceptance  of  certain  dogmas, 
or  upon  any  one  historical  event,  but  that  it  has 
been  possible  to  man  in  all  ages,  and  is  more  possi 
ble  now  than  it  was  in  the  time  of  Socrates,  only  by 
virtue  of  the  force  of  the  teachings  and  of  the  im 
mortal  example  of  the  founder  of  Christianity. 

To  the  impartial  observer  such  a  man  as  Julian 
the  Apostate  appears  as  about  the  best  Christian  of 
his  time,  although  he  utterly  abjured  Christianity, 
and  was  a  pagan  to  the  last  drop  of  his  blood.  To 
be  a  Christian,  in  the  higher  sense,  is  to  live  a  cer 
tain  life,  not  to  subscribe  to  a  certain  creed  ;  or,  in 
the  words  of  Milton  (though  Milton  would  probably 
have  repudiated  this  application  of  his  words),  it  is 
to  "  dare  to  think,  to  speak,  and  to  be  that  which 
the  highest  wisdom  has  in  every  age  taught  to  be 
best." 

It  may  not  be  amiss  for  me  to  supplement  or 
qualify  the  foregoing  pages  with  a  page  or  two 
which  have  a  different  bearing.  In  the  first  place, 
let  me  say  that  I  have  not  so  much  spoken  for  my 
self  therein  as  I  have  spoken  for  that  attitude  of 


38  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAT 

mind  which  makes  science  or  exact  knowledge  possi 
ble  —  a  state  of  mind  which  in  our  time,  I  am  aware, 
is  carrying  things  with  a  high  hand.  I  know  full 
well  that  science  does  not  make  up  the  sum  total 
of  life ;  that  there  are  many  things  in  this  world 
that  count  for  more  than  exact  knowledge.  A 
noble  sentiment,  an  heroic  impulse,  courage,  and 
self-sacrifice  —  how  all  your  exact  demonstrations 
pale  before  these  things  !  But  I  recognize  the  fact 
that  within  its  own  sphere  science  is  supreme,  and 
its  sphere  is  commensurate  with  human  reason  ;  and 
that,  when  an  appeal  is  made  to  it,  we  must  abide 
by  the  result.  Theology  assumes  to  be  a  science, 
the  science  of  God,  and  as  such  the  evidence,  the 
proof  upon  which  it  relies,  must  stand  the  test  of 
reason,  or  be  capable  of  verification.  Religion,  as  a 
sentiment,  as  an  aspiration  after  the  highest  good,  is 
one  thing  ;  but  formulated  into  a  system  of  theology 
and  assuming  to  rest  upon  exact  demonstration,  is 
quite  another.  As  such  it  is  exposed  to  the  terrible 
question,  Is  it  true  ?  In  other  words,  it  comes 
within  the  range  of  science,  and  must  stand  its  fire. 
When  miracles  are  brought  forward  as  an  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  the  natural  philosopher 
is  bound  to  ask,  Do  miracles  take  place  ? 

If  our  life  were  alone  made  up  of  reason  or  of 
exact  knowledge,  science  would  be  all  in  all  to  us. 
So  far  as  it  is  made  up  of  these  things,  science  must 
be  our  guide.  But  probably  four  fifths  of  life  is 
quite  outside  of  the  sphere  of  science ;  four  fifths  of 
life  is  sentiment.  The  great  ages  of  the  world  have 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  39 

been  ages  of  sentiment ;  the  great  literatures  are  the 
embodiments  of  sentiment.  Patriotism  is  a  senti 
ment;  love,  benevolence,  admiration,  worship,  are 
all  sentiments. 

Man  is  a  creature  of  emotions,  of  attractions,  and 
intuitions,  as  well  as  of  reason  and  calculation. 
Science  cannot  deepen  your  love  of  country,  or  of 
home  and  family,  or  of  honor  or  purity,  or  enhance 
your  enjoyment  of  a  great  poem  or  work  of  art,  or 
of  an  heroic  act,  or  of  the  beauty  of  nature,  or 
quicken  your  religious  impulses.  To  know  is  less 
than  to  love  ;  to  know  the  reason  of  things  is  less 
than  to  be  quick  to  the  call  of  duty.  Unless  we 
approach  the  Bible,  or  any  of  the  sacred  books  of 
antiquity,  or  the  great  poems,  or  nature  itself,  —  a 
bird,  a  flower,  a  tree,  —  in  other  than  the  scientific 
spirit,  the  spirit  whose  aim  is  to  express  all  values 
in  the  terms  of  the  reason  or  the  understanding,  we 
shall  miss  the  greatest  good  they  hold  for  us.  We 
are  not  to  approach  them  in  a  spirit  hostile  to 
science,  but  with  a  willingness  to  accept  what 
science  can  give,  but  knowing  full  well  that  there  is 
a  joy  in  things  and  an  insight  into  them  which 
science  can  never  give.  There  is  probably  nothing 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  that  appeals  to  our 
scientific  faculties,  yet  there  are  things  here  by 
reason  of  which  the  world  is  vastly  the  gainer. 
Indeed,  nearly  all  the  recorded  utterances  of  Jesus 
rise  into  regions  where  science  cannot  follow. 
"  Take  no  thought  of  the  body."  "  He  that  would 
save  his  life  shall  lose  it."  "  Except  ye  become  as 


40  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

little  children,  ye  cannot  enter  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  etc.  These  things  are  in  almost  flat  con 
tradiction  of  the  precepts  of  science. 

It  may  be  noted  that  Jesus  turned  away  from  or 
rebuked  the  more  exact,  skeptical  mind  that  asked 
for  a  sign,  that  wanted  proof  of  everything,  and  that 
his  appeal  was  to  the  more  simple,  credulous,  and 
enthusiastic.  He  chose  his  disciples  from  among 
this  class,  men  of  faith  and  emotion,  not  too  much 
given  to  reasoning  about  things.  In  keeping  with 
this  course  of  action,  nearly  all  his  teachings  were 
by  parables.  In  fact,  Jesus  was  the  highest  type  of 
the  mystical,  parable-loving,  Oriental  mind,  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  exact,  science-loving,  Occidental 
mind. 

Let  us  not  make  the  mistake  of  supposing  that 
all  truth  is  scientific  truth,  or  that  only  those  things 
are  true  and  valuable  which  are  capable  of  verifica 
tion  by  the  reason  or  by  experience.  Truth  has 
many  phases,  and  reaches  us  through  many  channels. 
There  is  a  phase  of  truth  which  is  apprehended  by 
what  we  call  taste,  as  poetic  truth,  literary  truth  ; 
another  phase  which  is  felt  by  the  conscience,  as 
moral  truth  ;  and  still  another,  which  addresses  the 
soul  as  the  highest  spiritual  and  religious  truths. 
All  these  are  subjective  truths,  and  may  be  said  to 
be  qualities  of  the  mind,  but  they  are  just  as  real 
for  all  that  as  the  objective  truths  of  science.  These 
latter  are  the  result  of  a  demonstration,  but  the  for 
mer  are  a  revelation  in  the  strict  sense.  Such  a 
poet  as  Wordsworth,  such  a  writer  as  Emerson, 


SCIENCE   AND   THEOLOGY  41 

speaks  to  a  certain  order  of  minds.  In  each  case 
there  is  a  truth  which  is  colored  by,  or  rather  is  the 
product  of,  the  man's  idiosyncrasy.  In  science  we 
demand  a  perfectly  colorless,  transparent  medium  ; 
the  personality  of  the  man  must  be  kept  out  of  the 
work,  but  in  poetry  and  in  general  literature  the 
personality  of  the  man  is  the  chief  factor.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  great  religious  teachers  ;  they 
give  us  themselves.  They  communicate  to  us,  in  a 
measure,  their  own  exalted  spirituality.  The  Paul 
ine  theology,  or  the  theology  which  has  been  de 
duced  from  the  teachings  of  Paul,  may  not  be  true 
as  a  proposition  in  Euclid  is  true,  but  the  sentiment 
which  animated  Paul,  his  religious  fervor,  his  he 
roic  devotion  to  a  worthy  cause,  were  true,  were 
real,  and  this  is  stimulating  and  helpful.  Shall  we 
make  meat  and  drink  of  sacred  things.?  Shall  we 
value  the  Bible  only  for  its  literal,  outward  truth  ? 
Convince  me  that  the  historical  part  of  the  Bible  is 
not  true,  that  it  is  a  mere  tissue  of  myths  and  super 
stitions,  that  none  of  those  things  fell  out  as  there 
recorded  ;  and  yet  the  vital,  essential  truth  of  the 
Bible  is  untouched.  Its  morals,  its  ethics,  its  poe 
try,  are  forever  true.  Its  cosmology  may  be  entirely 
unscientific,  probably  is  so,  but  its  power  over  the 
human  heart  and  soul  remains.  Indeed,  the  Bible 
is  the  great  deep  of  the  religious  sentiment,  the 
primordial  ocean.  All  other  expressions  of  this 
sentiment  are  shallow  and  tame  compared  with  the 
briny  deep  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  What  storms 
of  conscience  sweep  over  it ;  what  upreaching,  what 


42  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

mutterings  of  wrath,  what  tenderness  and  sublimity, 
what  darkness  and  terror  are  in  this  book !  What 
pearls  of  wisdom  it  holds,  what  gems  of  poetry  ! 
Verily,  the  Spirit  of  the  Eternal  moves  upon  it. 
Whether,  then,  there  be  a  personal  God  or  not, 
whether  our  aspirations  after  immortality  are  well 
founded  or  not,  yet  the  Bible  is  such  an  expres 
sion  of  the  awe,  and  reverence,  and  yearning  of 
the  human  soul  in  the  presence  of  the  facts  of  life 
and  death,  and  of  the  power  and  mystery  of  the 
world,  as  pales  all  other  expression  of  these  things  ; 
not  a  cool,  calculated  expression  of  it,  but  an  emo 
tional,  religious  expression  of  it.  To  demonstrate 
its  divergence  from  science  is  nothing  ;  from  the 
religious  aspirations  of  the  soul  it  does  not  diverge. 

What  I  wish  to  say,  therefore,  is  that  we  are 
conscious  of  emotions  and  promptings  that  are  of 
deeper  birth  than  the  reason,  that  we  are  capable  of 
a  satisfaction  in  the  universe  quite  apart  from  our 
exact  knowledge  of  it,  and  that  the  religious  senti 
ment  of  man  belongs  to  this  order  of  truths.  This 
sentiment  takes  on  various  forms  ;  the  forms  them 
selves  are  not  true,  but  the  sentiment  is.  To  recur 
to  my  former  illustration  of  the  constellations  — 
however  fantastic  the  figures  which  the  soul  has 
pictured  upon  the  fathomless  dome,  the  stars  are 
there  ;  the  religious  impulse  remains. 

It  is  perhaps  inevitable  that  systems  should  arise, 
that  creeds  should  be  formed,  and  that  the  name  of 
science  should  be  invoked  in  their  behalf,  but  the 
wise  man  knows  they  are  perishable,  and  that  the 


SCIENCE   AND  THEOLOGY  43 

instinct  that  gave  them  birth  alone  endures.  What 
is  the  value  of  this  instinct  ?  It  would  be  presump 
tion  for  me  to  attempt  to  estimate  it,  or  to  hope  to 
disclose  its  full  significance.  Its  history  is  written  in 
the  various  ethnic  religions,  often  written  in  revolt 
ing  forms  and  observances.  But  it  tends  more  and 
more  to  purify  itself,  rises  more  and  more  toward 
the  conception  of  the  fact  that  the  kingdom  of  hea 
ven  is  within  and  not  without ;  and  this  purification 
has  in  our  day  unquestionably  been  forwarded  by 
what  we  call  science. 


IV 

NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL 

theological  professors  make  a  mistake  when 
they  think  they  have  weakened  or  parried  the 
objections  of  science  to  their  doctrines  by  pointing 
to  the  fact  that  science  is  constantly  revising  or  re 
versing  its  own  conclusions ;  that  what  was  deemed 
good  science  at  one  time  is  found  to  be  false  science 
at  another.  "  This  modern  infallibility  which  men 
call  science  "  is  a  phrase  used  by  a  modern  doctor  of 
divinity  in  criticising  a  recent  paper  of  my  own  on 
Science  and  Theology. 

"  \Ve  who  are  yet  upon  the  safe  side  of  the  min 
isterial  dead-line,"  he  says,  "  can  remember  when  it 
was  scientific  to  assert  the  diverse  origin  of  the  race 
'  from  four  or  six  pairs  '  of  progenitors ;  and  we 
have  come  to  the  day  in  which  science  will  not  leave 
us  as  much  as  Adam  and  Eve  for  a  beginning.  We 
have  learned  the  igneous  origin  of  granite,  just  in 
time  to  be  commanded  to  unlearn  it,  and  substitute 
an  aqueous  origin."  And  the  conclusion,  therefore, 
is  that  science  is  discredited,  and  that  he  who  builds 
upon  it  plants  his  house  upon  the  sands.  But  sci 
ence  makes  no  claim  to  infallibility  ;  it  leaves  that 
claim  to  be  made  by  theology.  "  This  shifting  of 
positions  and  this  changing  of  results  "  but  marks  its 


NATURAL    VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  45 

growth,  its  development ;  and  it  is  precisely  this 
active  and  inquiring  spirit,  this  readiness  to  correct 
its  errors,  and  this  eagerness  to  reach  a  larger  gen 
eralization,  that  makes  it  the  enemy  of  the  tradi 
tional  theology.  It  abandoned  the  Ptolemaic  system 
of  astronomy  for  the  Copernican,  because  the  latter 
was  found  to  be  the  most  complete  generalization ; 
but  theology  still  adheres  to  its  Ptolemaic  system  of 
things.  To  seek  to  discredit  science  because  it  has 
made  mistakes,  and  has  had  to  unlearn  many  things, 
is  to  deny  the  very  principle  of  progress  ;  it  is  to 
reflect  upon  the  child  because  he  grows  into  a  man. 
The  main  outlines  of  the  physical  universe  science 
has  undoubtedly  finally  settled ;  the  great  facts  of 
astronomy  and  geology  are  not  to  be  reversed  or  set 
aside.  It  is  only  in  the  details,  the  filling  in  of  the 
picture,  that  errors  are  still  likely  to  occur.  No, 
what  theology  has  to  fear,  and  what  is  working  such 
mischief  with  it,  is  not  the  a  infallibility  "  of  science, 
but  it  is  the  scientific  spirit,  the  spirit  that  demands 
complete  verification,  that  applies  past  experience  to 
new  problems,  that  sees  that  immutable  laws  lie  at 
the  bottom  of  all  phenomena,  and  that  is  skeptical 
of  all  exceptions  to  the  logical  course  of  events 
until  they  are  irrefragably  proved. 

Science  is  ignorant  enough,  without  doubt,  about 
many  things.  After  it  has  done  its  best,  the  mys 
tery  of  creation  is  as  deep  as '  before.  But  what  it 
has  taught  the  race,  and  what  the  race  can  never 
unlearn,  is  that  the  sequence  of  cause  and  effect  is 
inviolable,  that  the  order  of  the  physical  universe  is 


46  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

rational,  that  creation  is  not  an  historical  event  but 
a  perpetual  process,  that  there  is  no  failure  and  no 
disorder  in  nature,  and  that  to  approximate  to  any 
thing  like  a  right  understanding  of  things  the  per 
sonal,  or  the  anthropocentric,  point  of  view  must 
be  abandoned. 

Our  doctor  of  divinity  is  unfortunate  in  confront 
ing  the  kind  of  "  exceptions  "  which  I  aver  science 
cannot  recognize  with  the  fact  that  water,  in  oppo 
sition  to  all  other  material  substances,  expands 
under  a  certain  degree  of  cold.  But  is  there  any 
known  exception  to  this  law  of  water  ?  Has  water 
ever  been  known  to  reverse  this  process  in  freezing  ? 
If  so,  the  exception  would  indeed  stagger  science  ; 
it  would  be  a  miracle.  A  child  born  of  a  woman,  but 
without  an  earthly  father,  and  of  a  superhuman 
species,  is  the  kind  of  exception  which  I  averred 
science  cannot  recognize  ;  but  does  this  bear  any 
analogy  to  the  exceptional  behavior  of  water  while 
freezing,  when  compared  with  other  substances  ? 
It  used  to  be  believed  that  in  every  animal  that 
possessed  a  circulation  the  blood  always  took  one 
definite  and  invariable  direction,  but  in  1824, 
Huxley  says,  it  was  discovered  that  a  class  of  ani 
mals  called  Ascidians  furnished  an  exception ;  the 
heart  of  these  animals,  after  beating  a  certain  num 
ber  of  times,  stops,  and  then  begins  to  beat  in  the 
opposite  way,  so  as  to  reverse  the  course  of  the 
blood,  which  returns  by  and  by  to  its  original  direc 
tion.  Such  an  exception  does  not  disturb  the  man 
of  science ;  it  only  teaches  him  greater  caution  ID 


NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  47 

making  his  deductions.  But  if  one  Ascidian,  and 
but  one,  could  be  found  whose  heart  beat  like  that 
of  other  animals,  that  would  be  a  puzzle  to  him. 
Or  if  one  comet,  and  only  one,  should  appear  carry 
ing  its  tail  toward  the  sun  instead  of  from  it,  com- 
etary  astronomy  would  be  reduced  to  chaos.  A  float 
ing  feather  is  no  exception  to  the  law  of  gravitation, 
but  a  floating  stone  and  a  falling  feather  would  be 
an  exception.  Science  as  well  as  experience  finds  ex 
ceptions  to  general  rules  everywhere,  but  these  excep 
tions  are  constant  and  as  strictly  the  result  of  natural 
law  as  anything  else.  Faith  in  the  continuity  of 
nature,  upon  which  the  scientist  builds,  no  less  than 
every  man  in  the  conduct  of  his  life,  does  not  mean 
sameness  or  identity  of  all  physical  processes,  but  it 
means  identity  of  these  processes  under  like  condi 
tions.  Given  the  same  conditions,  and  the  same 
results  always  follow.  Water  obeys  its  laws  under 
low  temperature,  and  iron  its.  It  is  not  long  since 
that  the  Bishop  of  Carlisle  urged  as  an  argument 
against  the  uniformity  of  nature  the  fact  that  the 
weather  is  changeable  !  If  his  lordship  could  have 
shown  that  the  laws  which  govern  the  formation  of 
clouds,  and  the  precipitation  of  rain  and  snow  are 
changeable,  or  ever  work  inversely,  he  would  have 
made  out  his  case.  The  fathers  of  the  church  be 
lieved  that  the  flesh  of  the  peacock  never  decayed. 
St.  Augustine  said  he  had  ascertained  by  experi 
ment  that  this  is  a  fact.  If  this  were  so,  it  would 
indeed  be  a  remarkable  exception  ;  but  the  man  of 
science  would  at  once  set  about  ascertaining  its 


48  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

natural  cause,  without  for  one  moment  attributing 
it  to  a  supernatural  one.  But  without  trying  the 
experiment  ourselves,  does  any  sane  man  to-day 
doubt  that  either  the  saint  deceived  himself,  or  else 
that  he  was  not  honest  ?  His  statement  is  incredi 
ble  because  it  contradicts  all  the  rest  of  our  know 
ledge  relating  to  the  decomposition  of  animal  tissue. 
I  suppose  the  last  thing  our  fathers  would  have 
thought  of  doing  would  have  been  to  try  to  recon 
cile  their  conception  of  Christianity  with  their  stores 
of  natural  knowledge.  They  did  not  feel  the  need, 
which  we  to-day  feel  so  keenly,  of  any  such  reconcilia 
tion.  They  cherished  their  faith  as  something  apart, 
something  not  founded  in  the  order  of  this  world, 
something  to  which  science  and  all  that  pertains  to 
the  "  natural  man  "  are  necessarily  strangers.  The 
order  of  this  world  is  carnal ;  it  is  full  of  evil,  and 
is  separated  by  an  impassable  gulf  from  the  sacred 
and  the  divine.  A  vast  number  of  most  excellent 
and  pious  people  still  feel  in  this  way  about  their 
religious  belief ;  it  is  all  the  more  sacred  and  pre 
cious  to  them  because  it  has  no  relation  to  the 
natural  course  of  mundane  things.  It  forms  for 
them  an  escape  from  the  humdrum,  from  the  fail 
ures,  and  from  the  materialism  of  life.  Who  can 
recall  without  deepest  sympathy  and  love  the  reli 
gious  beliefs  and  observances  of  the  many  simple 
and  credulous  people  he  has  known  in  his  youth, 
perhaps  of  his  own  parents  or  grandparents,  with 
their  fervid  piety  but  merciless  creeds,  their  faith  in 
their  church  and  in  the  saving  power  of  its  sacra- 


NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  49 

ments,  their  unquestioning  belief  in  the  literal  truth 
of  the  Bible,  every  word  of  it,  —  the  Fall,  the  Flood, 
the  miracles,  and  all  ?  What  a  refuge  their  faith 
was  to  them  in  times  of  trouble  ;  what  an  avenue  of 
escape  into  spiritual  and  ideal  regions  !  It  saved 
them ;  why  can  it  not  save  us  ?  For  the  simple 
reason  that  it  is  no  longer  credible  to  us ;  we  are 
born  into  another  world  ;  we  cannot  believe  the  old 
creed,  try  we  never  so  hard.  It  was  adequate  to 
their  knowledge,  to  their  development,  but  it  is  not 
adequate  to  ours.  The  old  terms  and  symbols  satis 
fied  them,  but  they  are  fast  becoming  obsolete  to 
us.  The  whole  aspect  of  the  universe  has  changed. 
But  our  salvation  is  to  be  had  upon  essentially  the 
same  terms  as  our  fathers'  —  namely,  by  fidelity  to 
what  we  see  and  feel  to  be  true. 

"  Few  minds  in  earnest,"  says  Cardinal  Newman, 
"  can  remain  at  ease  without  some  sort  of  rational 
grounds  for  their  religious  belief."  But  it  is  equally 
true  that  half-formed,  half-developed  minds,  which 
means  the  great  mass  of  the  people  of  any  age,  rather 
draw  back  from  exposing  their  faith  to  a  light  so 
common,  so  secular  as  that  of  reason.  Plutarch 
quotes  Sophocles  as  saying  that  the  Deity  is 

"  Easy  to  wise  men,  who  can  truth  discern," 

but  adds  that  the  vulgar  look  with  high  veneration 
upon  whatever  is  extravagant  and  extraordinary,  and 
conceive  a  more  than  common  sanctity  to  lie  con 
cealed  under  the  veil  of  obscurity.  The  average 
mind  clings  to  the  mysterious,  the  supernatural. 


50  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

Goethe,  as  lately  quoted  by  Matthew  Arnold,  said 
those  who  have  science  and  art  have  religion  ;  and 
added,  let  those  who  have  not  science  and  art  have 
religion,  that  is,  let  them  have  the  popular  faith  ; 
let  them  have  this  escape,  because  the  others  are 
closed  to  them.  Without  any  hold  upon  the  ideal, 
or  any  insight  into  the  beauty  and  fitness  of  things, 
the  people  turn  from  the  tedium  and  the  grossness 
and  prosiness  of  daily  life,  to  look  for  the  divine, 
the  sacred,  the  saving,  in  the  wonderful,  the  miracu 
lous,  and  in  that  which  baffles  reason.  The  disci 
ples  of  Jesus  thought  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as 
some  external  condition  of  splendor  and  pomp  and 
power  which  was  to  be  ushered  in  by  hosts  of  trum 
peting  angels,  and  the  Son  of  man  in  great  glory, 
riding  upon  the  clouds,  and  not  for  one  moment 
as  the  still  small  voice  within  them.  To  find  the 
divine  and  the  helpful  in  the  mean  and  familiar, 
to  find  religion  without  the  aid  of  any  supernatural 
machinery,  to  see  the  spiritual,  the  eternal  life  in 
and  through  the  life  that  now  is  —  in  short,  to  see 
the  rude,  prosy  earth  as  a  star  in  the  heavens,  like 
the  rest,  is  indeed  the  lesson  of  all  others  the 
hardest  to  learn. 

But  we  must  learn  it  sooner  or  later.  There 
surely  comes  a  time  when  the  mind  perceives  that 
this  world  is  the  work  of  God  also  and  not  of  devils, 
and  that  in  the  order  of  nature  we  may  behold  the 
ways  of  the  Eternal  ;  in  fact,  that  God  is  here  and 
now  in  the  humblest  and  most  familiar  fact,  as  sleep 
less  and  active  as  ever  he  was  in  old  Judea.  This 


NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  51 

perception  has  come  and  is  coming  to  more  minds 
to-day  than  ever  before  —  this  perception  of  the 
modernness  of  God,  of  the  modernness  of  inspiration, 
of  the  modernness  of  religion  ;  that  there  was  never 
any  more  revelation  than  there  is  now,  never  any 
more  miracles  or  signs  and  wonders,  never  any  more 
conversing  of  God  with  man,  never  any  more  Garden 
of  Eden,  or  fall  of  Adam,  or  thunder  of  Sinai,  or 
ministering  angels,  than  there  is  now  ;  in  fact,  that 
these  things  are  not  historical  events,  but  inward 
experiences  and  perceptions  perpetually  renewed  or 
typified  in  the  growth  of  the  race.  This  is  the 
modern  gospel  ;  this  is  the  one  vital  and  formative 
religious  thought  of  modern  times. 

The  mind  that  has  fully  opened  to  this  percep 
tion  no  longer  divorces  its  faith  from  its  reason,  no 
longer  rests  in  the  idea  of  a  dualism  in  creation  or 
opposition  between  God  and  the  world,  and  cannot 
feel  at  ease  until  its  religious  belief  is  in  harmony 
with  its  natural  knowledge.  The  two  must  not  be  at 
war.  What  we  hope  for,  what  we  aspire  to,  must 
be  consistent  with  what  we  know.  Faith  and  sci 
ence  must,  indeed,  go  hand  in  hand.  The  concep 
tion  of  religion  as  a  miraculous  scheme  for  man's 
redemption  interpolated  into  history,  God's  original 
design  with  reference  to  man  having  miscarried,  is 
entirely  undermined  and  overthrown  by  the  percep 
tion  of  the  unity  and  consistency  of  creation  as  re 
vealed  by  science. 

Who  does  not  see  that  it  adds  vastly  to  the  credi 
bility  of  a  doctrine  or  theory  to  find  that  it  fits  in 


52  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

with  other  things,  that  it  is  not  an  exception  or  an 
isolated  circumstance,  but  is  in  a  line  with  facts 
and  principles  of  the  truth  of  which  we  are  already 
assured  ?  Suppose  the  theory  of  Christianity,  as 
popularly  held,  had  something  like  the  breadth  of 
application,  or  the  same  warrant  and  basis  in  the 
constitution  of  things  as  has,  say,  the  theory  of  evo 
lution  or  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy  ; 
or  suppose  the  dogma  of  vicarious  atonement  pleased 
the  mind  and  harmonized  with  our  sense  of  the  fit 
ness  of  creation  like  the  modern  doctrine  of  embryo 
logy,  namely,  that  embryology  is  a  repetition  of  past 
history,  that  every  animal  in  its  development  from 
the  egg  assumes  successively,  though  briefly,  all  the 
forms  through  which  its  ancestors  have  come  in  the 
course  of  the  long  stretch  of  geological  ages,  should 
we  not  all  unhesitatingly  accept  it  as  true  ?  Would 
there  ever  have  been  any  doubters  and  skeptics  ?  I 
think  not.  It  is  because  these  things  have  no  such 
warrant  and  basis,  no  such  agreement  with  our  per 
ception  of  the  order  of  the  world,  that  doubters 
and  skeptics  exist ;  it  is  because  they  break  com 
pletely  with  all  the  rest  of  our  knowledge  of  crea 
tion. 

There  is  a  very  marked  activity  in  the  theologi 
cal  mind  of  to-day  which  has  for  its  end  the  bridging 
over  of  the  gulf  which  exists  between  natural  and 
what  is  called  "  revealed  "  truth.  Half  a  dozen  re 
cent  works  might  be  named  of  which  this  is  their 
principal  aim.  That  eloquent  preacher  Frederick 
W.  Robertson  sought  in  one  of  his  sermons  to  give 


NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  53 

a  natural  basis  to  the  dogma  of  vicarious  sacrifice, 
perhaps  the  most  incredible  dogma  in  the  popular 
creed.  See,  says  the  eloquent  divine,  how  the  min 
eral  must  decay  before  the  vegetable  can  grow  ;  how 
the  vegetable  must  die  before  the  animal  can  live  ; 
how  the  animal  must  perish  before  we  can  have 
roast  beef  for  our  dinner.  The  dove  is  stricken 
down  by  the  hawk,  the  deer  by  the  lion,  the  winged 
fish  falls  into  the  jaws  of  the  dolphin.  "  It  is  the 
solemn  law  of  vicarious  sacrifice  again  ; "  and  so 
still  higher.  "The  anguish  of  the  mother  is  the 
condition  of  the  child's  life."  Every  civilization  is 
founded  upon  the  labors  and  sufferings  of  those  who 
went  before.  When  this  law  of  self-sacrifice  is  con 
sciously  obeyed  it  becomes  the  highest  moral  virtue 
and  reaches  heroism.  Now,  all  this  is  true  ;  it  is 
a  part  of  our  natural  knowledge.  But  it  is  not  vica 
rious  sacrifice  ;  it  is  not  sacrifice  at  all  in  the  true 
sense.  It  is  the  order  of  the  succession  of  life  in 
nature.  The  living  present  is  always  reared  upon 
the  dead  past.  Not  only  men,  but  races  and  nations, 

"  May  rise  by  stepping-stones  of  their  dead  selves 
To  higher  things." 

The  six  noble  citizens  of  Calais  who  surrendered 
themselves  to  the  vengeance  of  the  English  king 
were  offering  themselves  as  a  vicarious  sacrifice. 
They  were  willing  to  die,  that  their  fellows  might 
live  ;  but  this  act  bears  no  resemblance  to  the  order 
of  nature  above  alluded  to,  and  from  which  the  great 
preacher  drew  his  illustration.  It  rises  to  a  region 
of  which  unconscious  nature  knows  nothing  —  the 


54  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

region  of  heroism.  But  neither  fact  nor  set  of  facts 
contains  any  hint  that  can  lead  to  a  rational  expla 
nation  of  how  the  death  of  Christ  benefited  mankind 
other  than  in  the  way  the  death  of  every  hero  bene 
fits  us.  This  is  an  esoteric,  mysterious  doctrine 
upon  which  no  light  can  be  thrown  by  an  appeal  to 
any  known  fact  or  law  of  the  visible  universe. 

The  eloquent  preacher  tries  to  help  out  his  ana 
logy  by  an  original  conception  of  Sin  as  "  a  single 
world  spirit,  exactly  as  electricity,  with  which  the 
universe  is  charged,  is  indivisible,  imponderable, 
one,  so  that  you  cannot  separate  it  from  the  great 
ocean  of  fluid.  The  electric  spark  that  slumbers  in 
the  dewdrop  is  part  of  the  flood  which  struck  the 
oak.  Had  that  spark  not  been  there,  it  could  be 
demonstrated  that  the  whole  previous  constitution 
of  the  universe  might  have  been  different  and  the 
oak  not  have  been  struck."  Every  separate  act  of 
sin  is  the  manifestation  of  an  original  principle  as 
broad  and  universal  as  this  —  the  world  spirit,  the 
spirit  of  evil.  Grant  this,  and  still  the  connection 
cannot  be  made.  Grant  that  this  world  spirit  slew 
all  the  prophets,  opposes  the  good  in  every  age,  and 
crucified  "  the  Just  One  "  himself,  as,  of  course,  it 
did  and  does,  how  did  the  death  of  Christ  modify  or 
conquer  or  remove  this  spirit,  or  shield  man  from 
the  supposed  wrath  of  his  Creator,  in  any  other  way 
than  the  death  of  every  just  person  for  a  worthy 
cause  accomplishes  these  ends  ?  These  are  myster 
ies  that  cannot  be  explained,  or  the  explanation  even 
hinted  at.  The  human  faculties  of  reason  and  in- 


NATURAL  VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  55 

sight  can  never  fathom  them.  Dying  that  others 
may  live  is  truly  the  order  of  this  universe,  its  natu 
ral  order.  But  what  examples  history  affords  of  its 
having  been  in  so  many  instances  the  conscious  hu 
man  order  —  the  order  which  makes  heroes  !  Even 
in  our  selfish  and  materialistic  age,  as  it  is  called, 
not  a  year  passes  but  our  pulse  is  quickened  by  the 
recital  of  some  act  of  heroism  during  disaster  upon 
the  sea  or  in  the  mines  or  in  burning  cities,  wherein 
men  have  calmly  faced  death  that  others  might  have 
a  chance  to  live.  But  there  is  no  analogy  here  to 
the  popular  theory  of  the  sufferings  and  death  of 
Christ.  All  men  have  to  suffer  the  pangs  of  mor 
tality  just  the  same,  and  the  consequences  of  sin  just 
the  same.  When  our  theologians  say  that  "  Christ 
suffered  for  our  sins,  and  that,  because  he  suffered, 
our  sins  are  forgiven,"  they  make  a  statement  that 
cannot  be  rationally  conceived  ;  they  use  a  language 
not  comprehensible  by  human  sense  —  the  language 
of  mysticism. 

When  we  regard  sin  disinterestedly  and  in  the 
light  of  our  real  knowledge,  we  find  it  but  a  relative 
term.  It  is  not  a  positive  thing  as  electricity  is, 
but  the  absence  of  a  thing,  as  cold  is  the  absence  of 
heat,  or  as  darkness  is  the  absence  of  light.  It  is 
the  imperfection  of  human  nature  when  tried  by  its 
highest  possibilities.  The  theological  conception  of 
sin  as  imputed  guilt  has  no  more  place  in  rational 
knowledge  than  sorcery  has.  The  deeper  our  in 
sight  into  the  method  of  nature,  or  the  more  we  are 
impressed  with  the  order  and  consistency  of  the 


56  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

world,  the  more  incredible  the  popular  Christianity 
seems  to  us.  To  the  man  of  science  the  old  theo 
logy  is  like  the  traditional  conception  of  angels  — 
men  with  both  wings  and  arms. 

This  conception  breaks  with  the  structural  plan 
of  all  vertebrates  the  same  as  theology  does  with  the 
law  of  cause  and  effect.  Human  beings,  with  wings 
in  place  of  arms,  might  be  contrary  to  the  fact ;  but 
such  a  conception  does  not  violate  the  homologies  of 
nature,  but  beings  with  both  wings  and  arms  ha\e 
no  counterpart  in  the  world.  They  are  not  merely 
contrary  to  experience,  they  are  contrary  to  the  fun 
damental  principle  of  structure  that  runs  through 
the  animal  kingdom.  But  when  these  armed  and 
winged  beings  were  first  conceived  of,  this  fact  was 
not  known  as  it  is  now,  and  the  un-natural  element 
in  Christianity  could  not  have  been  appreciated  in 
past  ages  as  it  is  to-day. 

The  doctrinal  part  of  the  popular  Christianity,  its 
supernaturalism,  is  an  inheritance  from  the  past  as 
much  as  witchcraft  or  magic  is.  But  it  did  not 
break  with  human  knowledge  then  ;  it  was  in  strict 
keeping  with  the  elements  of  the  marvelous  and 
the  exceptional,  of  which  human  knowledge  was  so 
largely  made  up.  There  was  no  science  in  those 
days,  no  conception  of  the  course  of  human  or  nat 
ural  events  as  the  result  of  immutable  law.  The 
personal  point  of  view  prevailed  in  everything. 
Everything  revolved  about  man ;  superhuman  be 
ings  took  sides  for  or  against  him.  Indeed,  so  far 
as  science  or  a  rational  conception  of  things  is  con- 


NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  57 

cerned,  the  fathers  of  the  church,  and  the  framers  of 
our  popular  theology,  were  mere  children.  Consid 
erations  were  all-powerful  with  them  which  to 
day  would  not  have  a  feather's  weight  with  a  man 
of  ordinary  intelligence.  Children  readily,  even 
eagerly,  believe  almost  any  impossible  thing  you 
may  tell  them  about  nature.  As  yet  they  have  no 
insight  into  the  course  of  nature,  or  of  the  law  of 
cause  and  effect,  no  fund  of  experience  to  serve  as 
a  touchstone  to  the  false  or  impossible.  The  same 
was  true  of  the  fathers,  and  of  the  races  that  wit 
nessed  the  advent  of  Christianity,  —  great  in  moral 
and  spiritual  matters,  but  mere  children  so  far  as 
the  development  of  their  scientific  faculties  were 
concerned  ;  and  it  is  from  the  scientific  faculties 
that  theology,  as  such,  proceeds.  Theology  is  an 
attempt  to  define  to  the  understanding  the  basis  of 
man's  religious  convictions  and  aspirations  ;  it  aims 
to  be  the  science  of  God's  dealings  with  man  and 
nature,  and  as  such  it  is  bound  to  share  the  infirm 
ity  of  the  logical  and  scientific  faculty  of  the  times 
in  which  it  arises. 

The  contemporaries  of  Jesus  thought  it  not  un 
reasonable  that  John  the  Baptist  should  come  to 
life  after  his  head  had  been  cut  off;  that  the  pro 
phet  Elias  should  reappear  upon  earth,  or  that  Jere 
miah  should  come  back.  These  notions  were  in 
strict  keeping  with  the  belief  in  the  marvelous  and 
the  supernatural  that  then  possessed  men's  minds. 
The  four  Gospels  were  a  growth  out  of  this  atmo 
sphere,  and  the  current  theology  is  a  continuation  of 


58  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

the  same  faitli  in  prodigies  as  opposed  to  natural 
occurrences.  The  fathers  knew  little  more  about 
the  true  order  of  the  physical  universe  than  savages. 
They  believed,  for  instance,  the  use  of  the  spade 
made  the  earth  fertile  because  it  was  of  the  form  of 
a  cross ;  that  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  shone  less 
brightly  since  the  fall.  Irenaeus  gave,  as  his  rea 
sons  for  accepting  the  four  Gospels  and  no  more, 
the  fact  that  there  are  four  universal  winds  and  four 
quarters  of  the  earth,  and  because  living  creatures 
are  quadriform.  Origen  believed  that  the  sun,  moon, 
and  stars  were  living,  rational  beings,  capable  of  sin 
ning,  and  were  subject  to  vanity,  etc.,  and  that  they 
prayed  to  the  Supreme  Being  through  his  only-be 
gotten  Son.  Tertullian  shared  the  belief  of  his  con 
temporaries  that  the  hyena  changes  its  sex  every 
year,  being  alternately  male  and  female.  Clement 
of  Home  believed  the  story  of  the  phoenix,  that 
wonderful  bird  of  Arabia,  which  was  said  to  live 
five  hundred  years ;  and  when  it  died  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  that  a  worm  sprang  from  its  decaying 
flesh  which  soon  became  a  new  phoenix,  which  forth 
with  took  up  the  bones  of  its  defunct  parent  and 
flew  away  to  the  city  of  Heliopolis,  in  Egypt,  and 
laid  them  on  the  altar  of  the  sun.  The  natural 
philosopher  has  always  taught  that  "  death  is  a  law 
and  not  a  punishment,"  but  "  the  fathers  taught  it 
is  a  penal  infliction  introduced  into  the  world  on  ac 
count  of  the  sin  of  Adam,  which  was  also  the  cause 
of  the  appearance  of  all  noxious  plants,  of  all  con 
vulsions  in  the  material  globe,  and,  as  was  sometimes 


NATURAL  VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  59 

asserted,  even  of  a  diminution  of  the  light  of  the 
sun."  How  dormant  and  puerile  man's  scientific 
faculties  were  during  the  early  centuries  of  Chris 
tianity,  when  the  foundations  of  the  science  of  the 
ology  were  laid,  is  well  illustrated  in  a  work  called 
the  "  Christian  Opinion  concerning  the  World,"  by 
the  monk  Cosmas,  of  the  sixth  century.  Cosmas 
taught  that  the  earth  was  literally  a  tabernacle,  be 
cause  St.  Paul  speaks  of  it  as  such,  and  that  Moses 
exactly  copied  its  form  in  his  tabernacle.  It  is  a 
fiat  parallelogram,  twice  as  long  as  it  is  broad,  roofed 
in  by  the  sky,  which  is  glued  to  the  outer  edges  of 
the  earth.  It  consists  of  two  stories,  in  one  of  which 
dwell  the  blessed,  and  in  the  other  the  angels,  etc. 
It  is  from  the  type  of  mind  that  conceived  such 
notions  of  the  universe  as  this  that  we  inherit  our 
theology.  But  it  'may  be  replied,  men  may  be 
feeble  in  science  but  great  in  religion.  True,  the 
fathers,  many  of  them,  were  great  in  religion,  they 
were  great  on  the  moral  and  spiritual  side ;  but  the 
system  of  theology  they  founded  aims  to  be  a  sci 
ence  ;  it  deals  with  exact  propositions  ;  it  is  not 
the  work  of  their  subjective  religious  natures  but  of 
their  scientific  faculties,  and  as  such  it  is  just  as 
artificial,  just  as  puerile  and  unreal,  as  the  notions 
of  the  physical  universe  to  which  I  have  adverted. 

The  whole  Christian  dispensation,  as  expounded 
by  the  popular  theology,  is  as  little  in  keeping  with 
the  physical  order  of  the  world  as  disclosed  by  sci 
ence,  or  with  the  natural  moral  order  as  disclosed 
by  the  conscience,  as  Indian  medicine  is  in  keeping 


CO  THE    LIGHT   OF   DAY 

with  modern  therapeutics.  The  whole  scheme  hinges 
upon  the  fall  of  Adam  in  paradise  as  an  historical 
event,  an  act  of  disobedience  on  the  part  of  the  origi 
nal  progenitor  of  the  human  family,  in  consequence 
of  which  sin  and  death  entered  the  world,  and  the 
suffering  and  death  of  Jesus  became  necessary  to 
bring  about  a  reconciliation  between  an  angry  God 
and  rebellious  man ;  with  the  attendant  doctrine 
of  the  mystery  of  the  atonement,  of  salvation  by 
grace,  of  the  eternal  punishment  of  the  pre-Chris 
tian  nations,  etc.  Now  this  conception  as  science, 
or  as  a  rational  explanation  of  the  world  as  it  is, 
and  of  man's  salvation,  is  on  a  par  with  Cosmas's 
theory  of  the  earth  with  the  sky  glued  to  the  outer 
edges.  It  shows  the  working  of  the  same  type  of 
mind,  it  rests  upon  the  same  arbitrary  and  artificial 
view  of  things. 

But  in  all  these  matters  the  question  now  is 
whether  the  ancient  or  the  modern  point  of  view 
shall  prevail ;  whether  evolution,  or  revelation,  is 
the  law  of  the  world.  The  ancient  point  of  view, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  exclusive  and  arbitrary  ;  it 
looked  upon  the  universe  as  something  made  and 
governed  by  a  being  or  beings  external  to  it.  In 
medicine  it  regarded  all  disease  as  the  work  of  evil 
spirits,  that  were  to  be  exorcised  by  charms  or  amu 
lets  or  incantations.  In  politics  it  inculcated  the 
divine  right  of  kings,  that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong, 
etc.  In  political  economy  it  taught  that  the  in 
terests  of  nations  were  mutually  antagonistic  and 
destructive  of  one  another.  In  physical  science  it 


NATURAL    VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  61 

encouraged  the  notions  we  have  seen.  The  fathers 
taught  that  all  men  were  under  condemnation  from 
the  moment  of  their  birth,  and  that  at  death  the 
souls  of  unbaptized  infants  went  straight  to  hell. 
St.  Augustine  taught,  and  the  Catholic  church  still 
holds,  that  when  water  from  the  hands  of  a  priest 
falls  upon  the  head  of  an  unconscious  infant,  a  mi 
raculous  change  is  wrought  in  its  spiritual  nature,  — 
a  change  by  which  it  becomes  essentially  a  new  and 
a  higher  being  ;  and  the  church  says,  with  charac 
teristic  charity,  of  him  who  believes  not  this  impos 
sible  doctrine,  "  Let  him  be  accursed  !  " 

It  is  this  type  of  mind  which  fostered  alchemy, 
astrology,  sorcery,  witchcraft,  and  demonology.  The 
air  and  the  earth  and  the  waters  swarmed  with  spirits, 
good  and  evil ;  disease,  pestilence,  storms,  fires,  and 
floods  were  the  work  of  evil  spirits  ;  the  more  kindly 
motions  of  nature  were  the  work  of  good  spirits. 
A  decrepit  old  woman  could  turn  herself  into  a  wolf 
and  devour  her  neighbor's  flocks.  Meteors,  eclipses, 
and  comets  were  portents  sent  directly  from  heaven 
for  the  warning  of  mankind. 

How  has  all  this  been  changed  !  How  completely 
the  mind  of  man  now  faces  the  other  way,  in  every 
thing  except  in  theology  —  faces  toward  a  natural 
explanation  of  all  phenomena  ! 

Let  no  hasty  reader  conclude  that  I  am  arguing 
against  the  reality  of  religion ;  I  am  only  arguing 
against  the  reality  of  magic  and  miracles ;  against 
the  conception  of  Christianity  as  a  scheme  for  man's 
salvation  interpolated  into  human  history,  and  in 


62  THE  LIGHT  OF   DAY 

no  sense  one  with  the  constitution  of  the  world; 
against  the  idea  that  the  spiritual  life  is  in  no  sense 
a  possible  development  of  man's  natural  capabilities, 
but  something  superadded  from  without,  —  a  unique 
and  peculiar  kind  of  life,  which  was  made  possible 
to  man  by  the  life  and  death  of  Christ,  and  in  no 
way  possible  before  that  event.  It  is  not  an  evo 
lution  from  man's  proper  nature  ;  it  comes  from  the 
opposite  direction,  and  is  external  and  supplemen 
tary.  "  Christianity,"  say  the  Andover  doctors, 
"  is  a  source  of  knowledge  concerning  God  which  is 
not  given  by  the  external  universe  nor  by  the  con 
stitution  of  man,  but  only  by  Christ."  Religion  is 
still  conceived  of  as  a  miraculous  scheme  to  remedy 
some  miscarriage  or  failure  in  the  plan  of  God's  deal 
ings  with  man,  a  failure  whereby  his  relation  to  the 
race  was  radically  changed.  It  is  looked  upon  as 
something  naturally  foreign  to  man,  something  to  be 
ingrafted  upon  him  from  without,  not  related  at  all 
to  his  natural  capacity  for  virtue  and  goodness  ;  some 
thing  which  a  blameless  man  may  live  and  die  with 
out,  but  which  a  cut-throat  during  the  last  moments 
of  his  life  upon  the  scaffold  may,  by  what  is  called 
an  act  of  faith  and  repentance,  obtain  !  Against 
such  notions  I  am  directing  my  argument ;  I  am 
urging  that  the  sentiment  of  religion  is  the  same  in 
all  ages  and  lands,  differing  in  its  outward  forms, 
but  not  in  its  inward  essence,  just  as  the  sentiment 
of  patriotism  or  of  loyalty  is  the  same.  How  is  a 
reasonable  man  to  favor  any  scheme  that  rules  out 
the  religion  of  Plato  and  Zeno  and  Seneca  and  Epic- 


NATURAL   VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  63 

tetus  and  Cicero  and  Lucretius,  or  Spinoza,  or  of 
Darwin,  as  of  no  avail,  as  only  snares  of  Satan  ? 
The  flowering  of  man's  spiritual  nature  is  as  natural 
and  as  strict  a  process  of  evolution  as  the  opening 
of  a  rose  or  a  morning-glory.  The  vital  inflorescent 
forces  are  from  within,  and  are  continuous  from  the 
root  up.  But  there  is  this  difference  :  While  the 
plant  must  have  a  congenial  environment,  light, 
warmth,  etc.,  the  human  flowering  often  takes  place 
amid  the  most  adverse  surroundings,  but  no  more  so 
in  the  religious  sphere  than  in  the  intellectual. 

Neither  would  I  say  that  the  "  conversion  "  upon 
which  our  Puritan  ancestors  laid  such  stress,  and 
which  is  so  dramatically  illustrated  in  the  case  of 
Paul,  was  not  genuine.  It  was  genuine  to  them,  but 
it  was  entirely  a  subjective  phenomenon,  like  the 
faith  cures  we  now  often  hear  about ;  it  was  the 
power  of  the  imagination  working  upon  the  con 
science.  It  is  not  a  necessary  or  universal  experi 
ence,  even  among  religious  people.  It  may  be  said 
without  any  irreverence  that  it  has  gone  out  of  fash 
ion.  The  predisposition  for  that  kind  of  experience 
no  longer  exists.  "  The  belief  in  witchcraft,"  says 
Milman,  "  made  people  fancy  themselves  witches," 
and  the  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  sudden  conversions 
led  to  these  kinds  of  moral  and  spiritual  earthquakes. 

Science  looks  upon  religion  as  belonging  to  the 
sphere  of  the  natural ;  it  is  the  legitimate  outcome 
of  man's  moral  nature  ;  the  term  that  best  expresses 
the  complete  development  and  flowering  of  all  his 
faculties.  To  define  it  in  the  guarded  terms  which 


64  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

Principal  Tulloch  uses,  namely,  as  "an  inner  power 
of  divine  mystery  awakening  the  conscience,"  is  to 
make  it  something  external  to  man  and  more  or  less 
arbitrary  and  theological.  This  view  the  world  has 
long  clung  to,  but  it  must  go  —  is  going.  The  Bib 
lical  writers  had  no  theology ;  the  Bible  is  strictly  a 
religious  book,  and  in  no  sense  a  theological  treatise. 
Paul  developed  or  outlined  some  theological  notions  ; 
but  wherein  was  Paul  great  —  in  his  theology,  or  in 
his  religious  fervor  ;  in  his  notions  of  predestination, 
or  in  his  aspirations  after  righteousness  ?  Jesus  is 
as  free  from  any  theological  bias  as  a  child  is  from 
metaphysics.  He  taught  but  one  thing  ;  namely,  that 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  in  the  condition  of  the 
heart,  a  condition  illustrated  by  his  own  life.  The 
yastjmd  elaborate  system  of  theology  which  grew  up 
out  Qf  his  parables  and  his  Orientalism,  and  over- 
vshadowed  the  world  for  fifteen  hundred  years  or 
more,  and  begat  sonje  of  the  darkest  crimes  the  his 
tory  of  man  has  to  show,  is  as  far  from  his  spirit 
and  that  of  his  disciples  as  the  east  is  from  the 
west. 

Undoubtedly,  religion  knows  certain  things  in  a 
more  intimate  and  personal  way  than  science  does ; 
so  does  poetry,  so  does  literature ;  and  science  can 
understand  how  this  is  so.  What  we  receive  through 
the  emotions  is  more  vital  and  personal  to  us  than 
what  reaches  us  through  the  reason.  The  person 
in  whose  mind  has  been  awakened  a  deep  love  of 
Jesus,  comes  to  know  Jesus  in  a  way  the  mere  out 
side  observer  does  not ;  his  spirit  takes  hold  of  the 


NATURAL  VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  65 

Christ  idea,  and  is  filled  and  modified  by  it  to  an 
extent  the  other  is  not.  An  emotional  process  is 
more  potent  than  a  rational  process.  The  know 
ledge  thus  gained  is  no  mqre  truly  knowledge,  but  it 
is  more  vital  knowledge.  It  is  not  merely  convic 
tion  ;  it  is  attraction  and  affiliation  as  well.  But 
this  is  true  not  of  Jesus  merely  ;  it  is  true  of  the 
whole  range  of  our  experience.  If  the  flower  or 
the  bird  or  the  tree  awaken  no  emotion  in  the  ob 
server,  will  he  ever  come  truly  to  know  it  ?  Unless 
we  love  an  author,  can  we  ever  get  at  his  deepest 
and  most  precious  meaning  ?  Hence  Goethe  said, 
"  We  learn  to  know  nothing  but  what  we  love." 
In  this  light,  science  sees  that  the  love  of  Jesus, 
or  of  God,  may  transform  a  man's  life,'  not  by  any 
peculiar  and  supernatural  process,  but  by  a  univer 
sal  and  well-known  law ;  namely,  that  we  grow  like 
that  which  we  love.  Every  object  we  look  upon  or 
think  of  with  the  emotion  of  love,  that  object  in  a 
measure  we  become.  But  to  begin  with,  we  are  not 
capable  of  loving  it  until  we  are  in  some  degree, 
either  potentially  or  actually,  like  it.  No  radically 
un-Christlike  nature  will  ever  come  to  love  Jesus. 
Hence  the  subtile  truth  in  the  old  doctrines  that 
have  been  so  hardly  and  literally  stated,  "  Except 
God  work  in  you  to  will  and  to  do,"  etc.  The 
Christian,  the  virtuous,  pious  soul,  is  born  and  not 
made,  just  as  truly  as  is  the  poet  or  artist,  and  the 
"new  birth"  in  the  one  case  can  mean  no  more 
than  it  does  in  the  other.  The  true  Christian  only 
gives  a  new  name  to  his  natural  piety  or  aptitude 


66  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

for  Christianity,  but  in  no  sense  is  there  a  radical 
change  of  nature.  It  is  simply  a  transference  of  al 
legiance,  as  in  the  case  of  Paul.  All  these  things 
may  be  so  stated  as  to  harmonize  with  the  rest  of 
our  knowledge,  but  as  expounded  in  theological 
books  they  do  not  so  harmonize,  but  run  counter  to 
it  completely.  Subjective  truths  are  stated  as  if 
they  were  objective  facts ;  qualities  of  the  mind 
and  spirit  are  expounded  as  if  they  were  realities  of 
the  experience. 

Certain  of  the  alleged  miracles  of  the  New  Testa 
ment,  as  the  healing  of  the  sick  by  an  act  of  faith, 
agree  with  what  we  now  know  to  be  true.  Certain 
human  ailments,  mainly  diseases  of  the  mind  and  the 
nervous  system,  have  in  recent  times  undoubtedly 
yielded  to  an  act  of  faith  in  the  supreme  efficacy  of 
certain  rites,  or  to  an  unwonted  mental  resolution. 
But  the  remedy  is  subjective  and  not  objective. 
The  virtue  was  not  in  the  hem  of  the  garment 
touched,  but  in  the  effort  of  the  will  of  the  person 
who  touched  it. 

What  is  at  variance  with  the  rest  of  our  know 
ledge  in  the  New  Testament  are  such  things  as  grew 
up  naturally  in  a  superstitious  age  around  the  person 
and  teachings  of  such  a  transcendent  being  as  Jesus 
was,  —  the  notion  that  he  was  more  than  human, 
that  he  had  no  earthly  father,  that  he  had  some 
superhuman  control  over  the  forces  of  nature,  that 
he  rose  from  the  dead,  that  his  death  bore  some 
mysterious  relation  to  the  sins  of  the  world,  etc. 
When  a  man  talks  about  the  value  and  importance 


NATURAL  VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  67 

of  the  ethics  of  Christianity,  —  of  charity,  of  mercy, 
of  justice,  of  gentleness,  of  purity,  or  righteousness, 
or  of  what  the  world  has  in  all  ages  taught  to  be 
highest  and  best,  —  we  can  understand  him ;  he 
speaks  the  language  of  truth  and  soberness.  When 
he  says  with  Marcus  Aurelius,  that  there  is  but  one 
thing  of  real  value,  —  "  to  cultivate  truth  and  justice, 
and  live  without  anger  in  the  midst  of  lying  and 
unjust  men ;  "  or  when  he  says  with  Peregrinus, 
that  "  the  wise  man  will  not  sin,  though  both  gods 
and  men  should  overlook  the  deed,  for  it  is  not 
through  the  fear  of  punishment  or  of  shame  that  he 
abstains  from  sin :  it  is  from  the  desire  and  obliga 
tion  of  what  is  just  and  good ;  "  or  when  he  says 
with  Micah,  "  And  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of 
thee  but  to  do  justly  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to 
walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ? "  or  when  he  says 
with  Solomon  that  "  the  fear  of  the  Lord  is  to  hate 
evil ;  "  or  with  Jeremiah,  "  He  judged  the  cause  of 
the  poor  and  needy  —  was  not  this  to  know  me  ? 
saith  the  Lord  ;  "  or  when  he  says  with  St.  James, 
"Pure  religion,  and  undefiled  before  God  and  the 
Father,  is  this,  to  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in 
their  affliction,  and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from 
the  world,"  he  gives  utterance  to  sentiments  that 
appeal  to  the  best  there  is  in  every  man,  and  that 
agree  with  the  highest  wisdom  of  all  ages  and  races. 
Science  can  understand  it  and  verify  it. 

But  when  he  talks  to  us  about  Jesus  in  the  lan 
guage  of  the  evangelical  churches,  —  about  the  atone 
ment,  original  sin,  sanctification,  saving  grace,  etc., 


68  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

—  he  simply  uses  a  jargon  that  may  mean  something 
to  him,  but  can  mean  nothing  at  all  to  an  outsider. 
He  states  things  as  facts  which  have  no  ground 
either  in  reason  or  experience ;  they  belong  to  a 
world  apart,  which  neither  the  rest  of  our  knowledge 
nor  our  natural  faculties  of  reason  and  observation 
can  put  us  in  communication  with.  He  might  just 
as  well  talk  about  the  elixir  of  life  or  of  the  philo 
sopher's  stone.  The  traditional  theology  has  un 
doubtedly  proved  itself  a  good  working  hypothesis 
with  crude  and  half-developed  minds,  but  upon  what 
thoughtful  and  cultivated  person  does  it  now  make 
an  impression  ?  No  race  has  been  lifted  out  of  bar 
barism  without  the  aid  of  supernatural  machinery. 
Once  lifted  out,  how  prone  we  are  to  discredit  the 
machinery  !  We  have  no  further  use  for  it.  We 
have  outgrown  it.  But  the  mass  of  mankind  are  slow 
to  outgrow  it.  To  the  mass  of  mankind  the  mirac 
ulous  element  of  Christianity  still  seems  vital  and  of 
first  importance.  Discredit  that,  and  you  have  dis 
credited  religion  itself  in  their  eyes.  But  not  so 
with  the  philosopher,  or  with  the  man  who  is  bent 
on  seeing  and  knowing  things  exactly  as  they  are. 

I  think  it  is  in  accordance  with  the  rest  of  our 
knowledge  that  Christianity  could  not  have  made  its 
way  in  the  world,  its  superior  ethical  and  moral  sys 
tem  could  not  have  gained  the  ascendency,  with 
out  the  cloud  of  myths  in  which  it  came  enveloped. 
What  a  seal  of  authentication  is  put  upon  it  by  the 
myth  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  !  How  this  fact 
stuns  and  overwhelms  the  ordinary  mind !  Was  it 


NATURAL  VERSUS   SUPERNATURAL  69 

Talleyrand  who  replied  to  some  enthusiast  who  pro 
posed  to  start  a  new  religion,  that  he  advised  him 
to  begin  by  getting  himself  crucified  and  to  rise  again 
on  the  third  day  ?  As  a  new  cult  founded  upon 
reason  alone,  or  as  a  natural  religion  alone,  Chris 
tianity  could  riot  have  coped  with  the  supernatural 
religions  that  then  possessed  the  world.  Men's 
minds  were  not  prepared  for  it,  and  it  is  probably 
equally  true  that  the  mass  of  mankind  are  not  yet 
prepared  for  a  religion  based  upon  natural  knowledge 
alone.  But  the  time  is  surely  coming,  and  natural 
science  is  to  be  the  chief  instrument  in  bringing  it 
about.  The  religious  sense  of  man  is  less  and  less 
dependent  upon  thaumaturgical  aids.  It  is  begin 
ning  to  hear  God  in  the  still  small  voice ;  not  in 
the  tempest,  or  in  the  earthquake,  or  in  the  fire ; 
•not  in  the  marvelous,  the  extraordinary,  the  irra 
tional,  but  in  the  quiet  and  familiar  facts  of  nature 
and  of  life.  The  vulgar  mind  asks  for  a  sign,  a  won 
der  ;  but  science  has  no  sign,  no  wonder  to  show. 
It  points  to  the  simplest  fact.  Its  relation  toward 
the  old  theology  is  like  that  of  Elisha  toward  Naa- 
man.  When  Naaman  came  to  the  prophet  to  be 
cured  of  his  leprosy,  he  expected  Elisha  to  do  some 
wonderful  thing,  some  miracle.  "  Behold,  I  thought, 
He  will  surely  come  out  to  me,  and  stand,  and  call 
on  the  name  of  the  Lord  his  God,  and  strike  his 
hand  over  the  place,  and  recover  the  leper."  Instead 
of  which  the  prophet  simply  told  him  to  go  and  wash 
seven  times  in  the  Jordan  and  be  clean.  "My 
father,"  said  his  servant  to  the  indignant  Naaman, 


70  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

"  if  the  prophet  had  bid  thee  do  some  great  thing, 
wouldest  thou  not  have  done  it  ?  how  much  rather, 
then,  when  he  saith  to  thee,  Wash,  and  be  clean  ?  " 
The  leprosy  of  the  miraculous  which  taints  men's 
minds  is  to  be  got  rid  of  in  the  same  way:  wash 
and  be  clean  in  the  current  of  the  sweet-flowing 
nature  that  is  always  near  at  hand,  and  that  is 
always  and  everywhere  the  same. 


FAITH   AND   CREDULITY 

E  of  our  most  eminent  doctors  of  divinity, 
Dr.  Fisher  of  Yale,  has  recently  been  discuss 
ing  the  nature  of  faith  and  revelation  in  one  of  the 
popular  magazines. 

The  doctor  says  that  skeptical  writers  are  apt  to 
"  describe  faith  as  an  arbitrary,  groundless  accept 
ance  of  doctrines  in  behalf  of  which  no  proof  is  pos 
sible.  This  is  to  confound  faith  and  credulity." 
But  the  doctor  does  not  himself  make  very  clear 
the  difference  between  the  two.  If  faith  goes  upon 
proof,  why  not  call  it  science  ?  Why  is  it  so  diffi 
cult  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  the  essence  of  religious 
faith  is  that  it  is  independent  of  proof,  and,  at  most, 
rests  upon,  or  starts  from,  a  degree  of  probability. 
Faith  proper  begins  where  reason  ends ;  where  rea 
son  avails  we  have  no  need  of  faith  :  where  there  is 
a  bridge  we  do  not  need  to  take  a  leap.  What  can 
be  proved  to  the  understanding  there  is  no  escape 
from  ;  but  our  religious  cravings  and  aspirations  are 
entirely  personal  and  subjective,  and  are  not  matters 
of  evidence.  Religious  faith  has  to  do  with  the 
supernatural  ;  and  what  can  reason  or  sense  do  with 
that  which  transcends  reason  and  sense  ? 

Credulity  is  quite  a   different  thing.     Credulity 


72  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

may  be  defined  as  belief  without  proof  in  matters 
•where  proof  is  demanded  and  is  within  reach.  Faith 
is  belief  without  proof  in  matters  where  proof  is  im 
possible.  Mankind  have  always  been  very  credu 
lous  ;  credulity  is  easy  ;  we  all  have  to  fight  against 
it.  But  faith,  as  Dr.  Fisher  insists,  is  not  easy  ;  it 
requires  a  strong  effort  of  the  will.  Children  are 
very  credulous ;  they  believe  whatever  we  tell  them 
without  proof.  Indeed,  they  do  not  yet  know  what 
proof  is.  So  with  savage  tribes,  though  with  them 
credulity  mainly  runs  into  superstition.  Credulity 
is  the  basis  of  superstition.  When  the  mysterious, 
the  preternatural,  is  brought  into  matters  within 
reach  of  investigation,  and  the  event  or  occurrence 
is  referred  to  anti- mundane  agencies,  as  in  the  case 
of  haunted  houses,  etc.,  that  is  one  form  of  super 
stition. 

When  Professor  Bryce  was  about  to  ascend  Mount 
Ararat,  he  was  told  by  the  people  at  its  base  that 
the  ascent  was  impossible  ;  that  no  human  being 
would  be  permitted  to  behold  the  top  of  the  sacred 
mountain.  For  all  that,  the  plucky  traveler  thought 
he  would  put  the  matter  to  the  test.  He  procured 
guides  and  set  out.  His  guides  failed  him  long  be 
fore  the  summit  was  reached,  but  he  pushed  on 
alone,  and  scaled  the  peak.  When  he  returned  and 
had  an  interview  with  one  of  the  religious  dignita 
ries  in  a  village  near  by,  and  his  guide  told  the 
priest  that  the  Englishman  had  been  to  the  top  of 
Ararat,  the  priest  smiled  loftily  and  said  it  was  im 
possible  —  no  man  had  ever  been  to  the  top  of  the 


FAITH   AND   CREDULITY  73 

mountain.  Here  we  have  a  case  of  credulity  run 
ning  into  superstition,  belief  in  the  interference  of 
the  supernatural  where  proof  or  disproof  was  easy. 

I  lately  read  in  the  autobiography  of  the  Italian 
sculptor,  Dupre,  an  incident  which  affords  a  similar 
illustration.  Dupro  was  an  excellent  man  and  a 
great  artist,  but  he  was  not  above  superstition,  as 
few  of  us  are.  He  was  driving  one  day  down  a 
steep,  rugged  mountain  road,  accompanied  by  his 
wife,  when  he  distinctly  heard  the  words,  "  Stop, 
stop  !  "  As  he  continued,  the  words  were  repeated, 
and  so  impressed  both  himself  and  wife  that  he  did 
stop  and  look  about  him,  and  called  out  to  his  sup 
posed  challenger.  Seeing  and  hearing  nothing  more, 
he  drove  on,  when  "  Stop,  stop,  stop  !  "  again  rang 
out  from  some  place  near  them.  Then  he  again 
stopped,  and,  much  impressed  and  even  alarmed,  he 
and  his  wife  both  got  out  of  the  carriage,  when  he 
discovered  that  the  linchpin  that  held  one  of  the 
hind  wheels  was  gone,  and  that  the  wheel  was  far 
bent  over  and  just  ready  to  drop  off,  and  thus  en 
danger  the  lives  of  the  occupants.  The  pious  artist 
was  deeply  impressed,  and  evidently  regarded  the 
warning  voice  as  providential.  But  a  little  investi 
gation  would  doubtless  have  dispelled  the  delusion. 
Probably  if  he  had  started  up  his  horses  after  he 
and  his  wife  left  the  carriage,  he  would  have  dis 
covered  the  source  of  the  voice  in  the  squeaking 
wheel.  Whenever  he  had  stopped  the  voice  had 
stopped  ;  the  moment  he  started  the  cry  began. 

How  full  history,  especially  the  religious  history 


74  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

of  the  world,  is  of  such  or  similar  incidents !  Cre 
dulity  underlying  religious  fear  and  hope  is  the  basis 
of  them  all.  In  Catholic  countries  such  supersti 
tions  thrive  luxuriantly.  Recently,  while  some 
friends  of  mine  were  stopping  in  Madrid,  a  good  deal 
of  excitement  was  created  by  a  reported  miracle  that 
had  just  happened ;  the  beard  of  the  picture  of  one 
of  the  saints  in  a  certain  church  had  grown  several 
inches  during  the  night !  Our  grandfathers,  who 
nearly  all  believed  in  spooks,  and  witches,  and  hob 
goblins,  and  various  signs,  and  wonders,  were  all 
victims  of  superstition. 

From  simple  credulity  the  element  of  the  marvel 
ous  and  preternatural  is  missing.  Boswell  told  Dr. 
Johnson  that  while  in  Italy  he  had  several  times 
seen  the  experiment  tried  of  placing  a  scorpion 
within  a  circle  of  burning  coals,  and  that  in  every 
instance  the  scorpion,  after  trying  to  break  through 
the  fiery  circle,  retired  to  the  centre  and  committed 
suicide  by  darting  its  sting  into  its  head.  But  the 
doctor  was  skeptical ;  appearances  are  deceptive  ;  he 
would  not  believe  the  story  unless  some  competent 
anatomist,  after  dissecting  the  scorpion,  declared 
that  the  creature  really  had  killed  itself.  It  was 
probably  the  doctor's  combativeness,  or  disposition 
to  differ,  that  saved  him  in  that  case.  Had  the 
story  had  any  element  of  the  mysterious  or  preter 
natural  in  it,  so  as  to  have  touched  Johnson's  re 
ligious  fears  and  prejudices,  he  would  doubtless  have 
accepted  it  at  once. 

It  was  once  commonly  believed  that  the  salaman- 


FAITH  AND   CREDULITY  75 

der  could  withstand  fire,  but  an  old  Catholic  traveler 
in  the  sixteenth  century  says  he  caught  one  and  put 
it  into  the  fire,  and  it  died.  But  he  believed  the 
story  of  the  basilisk  ;  namely,  that  its  look  was 
fatal.  He  said,  though,  that  it  was  necessary  for  the 
animal  to  look  its  victim  in  the  eye  at  a  certain  dis 
tance.  He  saw  a  basilisk,  but  it  was  dead.  If  it 
had  been  living,  probably  he  would  not  have  been 
as  ready  to  tests  its  powers  as  he  was  those  of  the 
salamander.  Like  Dr.  Johnson,  he  was  not  credu 
lous  unless  his  credulity  could  take  a  superstitious 
turn. 

A  good  instance  of  the  credulity  of  science  in  its 
youth  is  furnished  by  Albert  Magnus,  who  in  his 
book  upon  animals,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  says 
that  eels  leave  the  water  in  the  night,  invade  fields 
and  gardens,  and  feed  upon  peas  and  lentils.  A 
French  missionary,  writing  on  natural  history  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  says  of  the  humming  bird  that 
it  passes  the  winter  in  a  torpid  state,  hanging  by 
its  feet  from  the  under  side  of  a  limb  in  the  woods. 
The  credulity  of  country  people  in  reference  to  the 
divining-rod,  or  the  efficacy  of  twigs  of  the  beech  or 
the  willow  in  the  hands  of  certain  persons  in  locat 
ing  hidden  springs  or  water-veins,  etc.,  is  equally 
childish. 

Credulity  and  superstition  have  to  do  mainly 
with  the  visible  material  universe  ;  faith  with  the 
spiritual  invisible  world. 

Faith  is,  as  Amiel  says  in  his  "  Journal,"  "  certi 
tude  without  proof,"  and  is  therefore  opposed  to 


76  THE  LIGHT   OF  DAY 

science,  which  goes  entirely  upon  proof.  It  is  a 
moral  rather  than  an  intellectual  certitude ;  a  con 
viction  of  the  heart  —  to  use  the  old  phraseology  — 
rather  than  a  persuasion  of  the  mind.  That  is,  it 
is  arrived  at  through  an  emotional  process,  rather 
than  through  a  mental  or  logical  one.  In  an  over- 
intellectual  and  over-reflective  age  like  ours,  faith 
undoubtedly  suffers  a  decline.  It  thrives  best  in 
stirring  uncritical  times.  The  scientific  spirit  is  as 
-inimical  to  it  as  frost  to  vegetation.  In  all  the 
centuries  of  our  era,  except  the  present,  reason  has 
been  the  willing  servant  of  faith.  Faith  has  said  to 
it,  Go  here,  go  there  ;  prove  this,  prove  that ;  and 
reason  has  obeyed  with  alacrity.  In  our  day  reason 
turns  upon  faith  and  questions  its  right  to  rule  and 
to  lead,  and  the  result  is  an  almost  ruinous  shrink 
age  of  the  old  theological  values. 

Dr.  Fisher  insists  upon  the  proofs  of  faith,  but  he 
fails  to  point  them  out.  They  are  not  to  be  appre 
hended  by  the  rational  faculties.  They  are  subjec 
tive  ;  they  are  in  the  heart  and  conscience  of  the 
individual,  and  cannot  be  communicated  as  proof. 
That  there  is  a  power  not  ourselves,  a  power  in 
which  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being,  and 
of  which  all  things  are  the  garment  and  expression, 
is  not  a  matter  of  faith,  but  of  reason  and  sense. 
That  this  power  is  a  personal  being,  the  moral 
governor  and  ruler  of  the  universe,  as  the  old 
theology  has  it,  or  the  loving  father  and  protec 
tor,  as  the  new  teaches,  is  a  matter  of  faith.  We 
speak  of  the  creed  of  the  church  as  a  system  of  faith. 


FAITH   AND   CREDULITY  77 

The  acceptance  of  most  of  its  tenets  is  an  act  of 
faith  rather  than  of  reason.  That  Jesus  of  Naza 
reth  was  born  of  a  woman  is  a  matter  of  reason ; 
that  he  was  born  of  a  virgin  and  had  no  earthly  fa 
ther  is  a  matter  of  faith.  That  he  was  persecuted, 
that  he  suffered  and  died  upon  the  cross,  we  have 
no  difficulty  in  believing  ;  but  that  he  rose  from  the 
dead,  and  ascended  bodily  up  into  heaven,  is  again 
a  dogma  that  belongs  solely  to  faith.  And  so  with 
the  rest  of  the  Apostles'  Creed. 

There  is  a  passage  in  Goethe's  autobiography  that 
bears  upon  this  subject,  and  a  very  suggestive  one. 

"  General,  natural  religion,"  he  says,  "  properly 
speaking,  requires  no  faith  ;  for  the  persuasion  that 
a  great  producing,  regulating,  and  conducting  Being 
conceals  himself,  as  it  were,  behind  nature,  to  make 
himself  comprehensible  to  us  —  such  a  conviction 
forces  itself  upon  every  one.  Nay,  if  we  for  a  mo 
ment  let  drop  this  thread  which  conducts  us  through 
life,  it  may  be  immediately  and  everywhere  resumed. 
But  it  is  different  with  a  special  religion  which  an 
nounces  to  us  that  this  Great  Being  distinctly  and 
preeminently  interests  himself  for  one  individual, 
one  family,  one  people,  one  country.  This  religion 
is  founded  on  faith,  which  must  be  immovable  if  it 
would  not  be  instantly  destroyed.  Every  doubt  of 
such  a  religion  is  fatal  to  it.  One  may  return  to 
conviction,  but  not  to  faith." 

St.  Paul  saw  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  an 
appeal  to  reason,  and  said  boldly  that  "  no  man  can 
say  that  Jesus  is  the  Lord  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost." 


78  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

To  expect  a  man  to  affirm  it  by  his  unaided  reason, 
or  upon  any  grounds  of  evidence  that  can  be  had,  is 
to  expect  the  impossible.  But  Dr.  Fisher  says  we 
have  proof  in  its  nature  experimental,  like  the  veri 
fication  of  the  calculations  of  the  astronomer  by  an 
eclipse  occurring  exactly  on  time ;  namely,  in  the 
miracles.  But  if  an  appeal  is  made  to  reason,  does 
he  not  see  that  reason  demands  proof  that  the 
miracles  occurred  ?  Eclipses  take  place  in  our  day, 
but  miracles  do  not.  The  laws  and  processes  of 
nature  are  continuous,  but  theology  introduces  us  to 
a  world  devoid  of  continuity. 

Theologians  lay  much  stress  upon  contemporary 
belief  and  opinion  —  upon  the  statement  of  those 
who  themselves  either  witnessed  the  miracles  or 
simply  voiced  the  popular  belief  in  their  reality. 
But  in  such  matters  contemporary  opinion  counts 
for  but  little.  The  contemporary  belief  in  the  real 
ity  of  witchcraft  is  overpowering.  There  is  not  merely 
a  cloud  of  witnesses  —  there  is  a  world  of  witnesses. 
The  contemporary  belief  in  the  statue  of  Lot's  wife 
upon  the  shores  of  the  Dead  Sea  and  of  the  marvel 
ous  character  of  the  Dead  Sea  itself  —  namely,  that 
it  was  black  and  sticky,  that  it  spit  forth  fire,  that 
it  threw  up  great  foul  masses  that  burned  like  pitch, 
that  the  fruit  upon  its  shores  was  filled  with  ashes, 
etc.  ;  the  testimony  of  reputable  travelers,  Jews, 
Christians,  and  Mohammedans,  who  had  visited  the 
sea  and  witnessed  these  wonders  —  is  as  convincing 
as  such  testimony  can  be.  Yet  do  we  not  now 
know  that  either  the  witnesses  saw  falsely,  or  else 


FAITH   AND   CREDULITY  79 

reported  falsely  what  they  saw  ?  Sir  John  Man- 
deville  says  he  saw  iron  swim  in  the  Dead  Sea  and 
a  feather  sink,  and  that  it  vomited  up  masses  of  fiery 
matter  as  big  as  a  horse  ;  and  Sir  John  was  a  pious 
man. 

I  think  we  may  safely  rest  upon  the  statement 
that  no  natural  evidence  can  establish  the  super 
natural.  Our  senses  cannot  apprehend  it  because 
it  is  supersensible ;  our  reason  cannot  verify  it  be 
cause  it  transcends  reason.  The  historical  proofs 
of  Christianity  are  adequate  to  establish  ordinary 
events,  but  not  extraordinary. 

Dr.  McCosh  says  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  as 
well  established  as  any  event  of  ancient  history  — 
as  the  death  of  Caesar,  for  instance,  which  every 
body  believes  in.  Do  we  want  any  proof  of  the 
death  of  Caesar  ?  Do  not  all  men  die  ?  The  man 
ner  of  his  death  would  be  the  only  question,  and  we 
do  not  want  very  strong  proof  upon  that  point, 
since  thousands  of  other  men  have  fallen  by  the 
knife  of  the  assassin.  But  in  the  alleged  resurrec 
tion  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  we  have  an  event  the  like 
of  which  never  happened  before  or  since,  an  event 
that  contradicts  the  whole  experience  of  the  human 
race,  an  event  which  by  its  startling  and  unheard-of 
character  overwhelms  the  mind,  and  we  are  asked  to 
believe  it  as  readily  as  we  do  the  death  of  Caesar,  on 
the  authority  of  a  book  or  books  of  uncertain  date 
and  uncertain  authorship,  written  by  persons  who  do 
not  even  allege  that  they  were  eye-witnesses  of  the 
event  they  describe.  Suppose  the  historian  averred 


80  THE  LIGHT   OF  DAY 

that  Caesar  never  died,  that  he  was  still  living  hun 
dreds  of  years  after  his  supposed  assassination,  no 
matter  how  momentous  the  consequences  which  had 
flowed  from  that  belief,  would  we  be  satisfied  with 
ordinary  proof  of  the  fact  ?  The  alleged  resurrec 
tion  of  Jesus  is  just  as  legitimate  a  problem  of 
scientific  inquiry  as  any  fact  of  geology  or  natural 
history,  because  it  is  put  forward  as  a  concrete 
physical  fact.  Indeed,  the  whole  Christian  problem 
is  a  historical  problem,  one  of  documents  and  records, 
and  falls  within  the  reach  of  inductive  research. 
We  may  ask,  Is  it  true  ?  The  impartial  inquirer 
will  approach  it  in  the  true  scientific  spirit,  weigh 
ing  the  probabilities,  clearing  up  the  discrepancies, 
and  seeking  verification.  He  will  ask  how  far  do 
the  occurrences  narrated  square  with  the  world  of 
human  experience  ?  What  was  the  type  of  mind, 
credulous  or  incredulous,  realistic  or  imaginative  ? 
What  were  the  current  beliefs  and  expectations  ? 
How  far  does  the  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  times 
crop  out  in  the  narrative  ?  How  far  do  the  current 
superstitions  crop  out  ?  For  instance,  we  see  here  in 
the  Gospel  writings  a  belief  in  angels,  or  supernatu 
ral  human  beings,  and  in  demoniacal  possessions 
cropping  out.  Has  the  subsequent  experience  of 
mankind  confirmed  or  dissipated  the  belief  in  these 
things  ?  We  see  in  Matthew's  narrative  the  belief 
that  the  dead  sometimes  come  forth  from  their 
graves  and  waLk  abroad  and  appear  to  men,  and  that 
they  choose  darkness  rather  than  light ;  we  see  the 
belief  that  dead  saints  and  worthy  persons  may 


FAITH  AND   CREDULITY  81 

come  back  to  earth,  and  we  see  everywhere  an 
unquestioning  belief  in  the  reality  of  what  we  called 
miracles,  or  physical  results  brought  about  by  other 
than  physical  means.  Do  these  things  agree  with 
the  rest  of  our  knowledge  ?  If  not,  is  the  proof  of 
them  commensurate  with  their  exceptional  charac 
ter  ? 

John  Locke  stated  the  truth  about  this  matter  of 
faith  and  reason  two  hundred  years  ago. 

"  There  being  many  things,"  he  says,  "  wherein 
we  have  very  imperfect  notions,  or  none  at  all ;  and 
other  things  of  whose  past,  present,  or  future  exist 
ence,  by  the  natural  use  of  our  faculties,  we  can 
have  no  knowledge  at  all ;  these  as  being  beyond 
the  discovery  of  our  natural  faculties,  and  above 
reason,  are,  when  revealed,  the  proper  matter  of 
faith.  Thus,  that  part  of  the  angels  rebelled  against 
God,  and  thereby  lost  their  first  happy  state ;  and 
that  the  dead  shall  rise  and  live  again  :  these,  and 
the  like,  being  beyond  the  discovery  of  reason,  are 
purely  matters  of  faith,  with  which  reason  has 
directly  nothing  to  do." 

But  Locke  says  that  reason  is  to  judge  whether  or 
not  the  revelation  be  genuine.  Yet  what  test  the 
reason  has  of  the  validity  of  a  revelation  the  philoso 
pher  does  not  set  forth. 

If  the  facts  or  truths  revealed  are  above  reason, 
how  can  the  fact  of  the  revelation  itself  be  proved 
to  reason  ?  Is  faith  itself  reasonable  ?  Of  course 
it  all  depends  upon  the  assumption  with  which  we 
start.  If  we  start  with  the  assumption  upon  which 


82  .   THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

the  church  is  founded,  namely,  the  assumption  of 
an  anthropomorphic  God,  an  Infinite  Person,  the  cre 
ator  and  upholder  of  all  things,  whose  plans  with 
reference  to  man  have  not  gone  smoothly,  but  have 
been  sadly  deranged  and  frustrated  by  man  himself 
through  what  we  call  sin,  so  that  the  creature  is 
hopelessly  estranged  from  the  creator,  and  so  on 
through  the  rest  of  the  theological  formula,  —  if  we 
start  with  this  assumption,  all  the  rest  comes  easy  : 
faith  and  revelation  are  reasonable,  the  theory  of 
the  Christ  and  the  atonement  is  reasonable,  and 
with  one  or  two  more  assumptions,  which  Cardinal 
Newman  readily  makes,  the  Catholic  church  becomes 
the  very  child  and  servant  of  reason.  It  is  reason 
able  that  this  Infinite  Person,  who  is  not  here  upon 
earth,  but  in  heaven,  should  want  a  representative, 
a  vicar,  in  this  world,  to  look  after  the  well-being 
of  his  children,  etc.,  and  what  more  reasonable  than 
that  the  great  mother  church,  the  church  which  the 
apostles  founded,  should  be  that  go-between,  that  re 
presentative  ?  The  Protestant  churches  are  all  more 
or  less  compromises  with  the  devil,  that  is,  with 
reason,  with  sense,  with  the  natural  man ;  but  the 
Catholic  church  makes  no  compromises  with  the  indi 
vidual  ;  it  stands  for  authority.  In  fact,  out  of  the 
purely  human  or  anthropomorphic  conception  of  the 
universe  upon  which  our  theology  is  based,  it  arises 
as  the  inevitable  result.  If  your  assumption  at  one 
end  of  the  Christian  scheme  is  reasonable,  your 
acceptance  of  the  Catholic  church  at  the  other  is 
equally  so.  If  the  universe  is  an  institution,  a 


FAITH  AND   CREDULITY  83 

government,  a  hierarchy,  and  if  mankind  are  in  a 
lost  and  rebellious  condition  with  reference  to  the 
head  of  this  government  or  hierarchy,  then  does  the 
idea  of  an  infallible  pope  and  all  the  saving  ordi 
nances  of  the  church  harmonize  perfectly  with  this 
conception. 

When  you  once  assume  the  existence  of  the 
supernatural,  you  adjust  your  reason  to  that  assump 
tion.  "  If  the  supernatural  exists,"  says  a  Catholic 
writer,  "  it  is  reasonable  that  it  should  exist ;  it  is 
reasonable  that  it  should  present  difficulties,  that  we 
should  be  able  to  apprehend  it  only  in  part,  that  we 
should  need  a  special  endowment  of  power  or  in 
sight,  called  faith,  to  fully  enter  into  it ;  it  is  reason 
able  that  faith  should  not  obliterate  the  inferior 
intellectual  faculties,  but  should  supplement  and 
raise  them ;  it  is  reasonable  that  there  should  be  a 
revealed  religion,  and  that  this  religion  should  pos 
sess  mysteries." 

St.  Paul's  definition  of  faith  the  religious  mind 
has  clung  to  very  fondly  —  namely,  "  the  substance 
of  things  hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  not 
seen  ;  "  and  Dr.  Fisher's  new  version  of  the  passage 
—  to  wit,  "  the  firm  assurance  of  things  hoped  for, 
the  being  convinced  of  things  not  seen"  —  can 
hardly  take  its  place  in  the  popular  conscience.  It 
is  true,  but  not  taking.  Faith  is  neither  evidence 
nor  substance,  though  the  religious  world  is  con 
stantly  persuading  itself  that  it  is.  "  It  makes  real 
to  the  mind  objects  of  hope  "  —  so  real  that  "  they 
exercise  a  due  control  in  the  shaping  of  conduct." 


84  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

As  we  have  been  long  taught,  belief  in  the  Chris 
tian  religion  is  more  a  matter  of  will  than  of  reason. 
The  will  must  be  reached  or  enlisted  first.  Cole 
ridge  said  to  Crabb  Robinson  that  "  religious  belief 
is  an  act,  not  of  the  understanding,  but  of  the  will. 
To  become  a  believer  one  must  love  the  doctrine 
and  feel  in  harmony  with  it,  and  not  sit  down  and 
coolly  inquire  whether  he  should  believe  it  or  not." 

Hence  I  agree  with  Dr.  Fisher  that  in  these 
matters  "  the  timidity  of  reason  has  to  be  overcome 
by  a  courageous  exercise  of  will.  In  appropriating, 
or  making  our  own,  the  things  of  faith,  there  is  a 
venture  to  be  made  on  the  ground  of  evidence,  with 
out  the  stimulus  and  support  of  an  appeal  to  the 
senses."  People  of  strong  wills,  men  of  action  and 
of  affairs,  are  less  apt  to  be  skeptical  than  more 
purely  meditative  and  intellectual  minds.  Words 
worth  said  of  his  poet,  — 

"  You  must  love  him,  ere  to  you 
He  will  seem  worth}*  of  your  love;  " 

and  of  the  Christian  faith  it  is  equally  true  that  you 
must  believe  it  ere  it  seems  worthy  of  your  credence. 
How  to  do  this  is  the  great  problem.  Hence  the 
cry  that  goes  up  from  the  churches  continually  for 
more  faith,  more  faith. 

I  have  said  that  faith  begins  where  reason  ends  ; 
but  by  this  statement  I  would  only  emphasize  the 
fact  that  the  province  of  the  one  lies  entirely  outside 
the  province  of  the  other.  In  the  order  of  nature 
faith  is  first.  We  find  ourselves  in  possession  of  a 
certain  belief  or  certitude,  and  then  we  proceed  to 


)F    THE 

/ERSITY 

OF 


AND   CREDULITY  85 

reason  about  it.  In  the  order  of  historical  develop 
ment  religion  is  not  a  matter  of  belief,  of  creeds  and 
dogmas,  but  of  observances.  The  early  nations  had 
certain  religious  rites  and  practices,  but  no  belief, 
in  our  sense  of  the  word  ;  that  is,  as  a  conscious 
intellectual  act.  A  man  cannot  reason  himself  into 
religion,  though  he  can  reason  himself  into  religious 
opinions.  Religion  is  a  sentiment  just  as  much  as 
poetry  is,  and  does  not  wait  upon  the  logical  facul 
ties  any  more  than  poetry  does.  The  demonstra 
tions  of  science  no  competent  mind  can  resist,  but 
the  demonstrations  of  religion,  its  proofs,  evidences, 
etc.,  only  impress  such  minds  as  are  already  con 
vinced,  as  have  already  taken  the  leap  which  faith 
requires. 

Religious  faith  is  losing  ground  in  our  day  be 
cause  the  light  which  fills  the  world,  begotten  by 
science,  education,  industry,  democracy,  is  more  and 
more  the  light  of  broad  noonday,  clear,  strong,  mer 
ciless.  Our  fathers  stood  much  nearer  the  twilight, 
the  region  of  sentiment,  of  emotion,  of  enticing  but 
delusive  lights  and  shades.  The  morning  of  the 
world  is  past  :  what  the  completed  day  will  show 
forth  does  not  yet  appear. 


VI 

IN   CORROBORATION   OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY 

TAR.  LYMAN  ABBOTT,  in  criticising  Professor 
*-^  Huxley  in  a  recent  number  of  the  "  North 
American  Keview,"  lost  sight  of  a  very  important  dis 
tinction,  a  distinction  which  Professor  Huxley  keeps 
constantly  before  him  in  the  articles  referred  to ; 
namely,  the  distinction  between  objective  and  sub 
jective  truth,  between  a  statement  or  a  proposition 
which  rests  upon  outward,  independent,  logical  evi 
dence,  and  is  addressed  to  the  reason  and  the  under 
standing,  and  one  which  is  purely  personal  and  sub 
jective,  involving  the  taste,  the  emotions,  the  hopes, 
the  aspirations,  and  which  is  true  or  false  according 
to  the  temper  and  experience  of  the  person  to  whom 
it  is  addressed.  When  our  theological  doctors  talk 
of  the  evidences  of  Christianity,  they  lay  great 
stress  upon  the  historical  evidences  ;  the  root  of  the 
matter  is  here  ;  these  are  real,  objective,  positive, 
and  are  matters  of  logical  and  scientific  inquiry. 
The  subjective  evidences,  —  that  is,  those  which  are 
furnished  by  the  mental  or  spiritual  experience  of 
the  individual  and  beget  a  feeling  of  certainty  and 
security  in  his  mind,  —  these  are  of  quite  a  different 
nature,  and  our  logical  faculties  can  have  little  to  do 
with  them. 


IN   CORROBORATION    OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY      87 

Professor  Huxley,  in  his  "  Nineteenth  Century  " 
articles  referred  to,  applies  the  scientific  method  of 
inquiry  to  certain  alleged  occurrences  in  the  New 
Testament  —  occurrences  which  must  rest  upon 
objective  evidence,  if  upon  any,  and  in  which  the 
appeal  of  credibility  is  made,  not  to  our  faculty  of 
spiritual  insight,  but  to  our  reason  and  understand 
ing.  Is  the  story  of  the  Gadarene  swine  probable  ? 
is  it  reasonable  ?  does  it  agree  with  the  rest  of  our 
knowledge?  "The  Gadarene  miracle  either  hap 
pened,  or  it  did  not.  Whether  the  Gadarene  '  ques 
tion  '  is  moral  or  religious  or  not  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  fact  that  it  is  a  purely  historical  ques 
tion  whether  the  demons  said  what  they  are  de 
clared  to  have  said,  and  the  devil-possessed  pigs  did 
or  did  not  rush  over  the  cliffs  of  the  Lake  of  Gen- 
nesaret  on  a  certain  day  of  a  certain  year,"  etc. 
"  If  that  is  not  a  matter  about  which  evidence  ought 
to  be  required,  and  not  only  legal  but  strict  scien 
tific  proof  demanded  by  sane  men  who  are  asked  to 
believe  the  story  —  what  is  it  ?  "  Professor  Huxley 
thinks  a  man  who  believes  such  a  story  without 
logical  evidence  is  guilty  of  an  immoral  act.  And 
so  generally  with  the  miracles  recorded  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  with  demonology  and  possessions. 
These  things  are  alleged  occurrences  in  the  outward 
physical  world,  and  they  are  not  supported  by  ade 
quate  objective  evidence. 

Men  reason  upon  the  subject  of  the  soul's  immor 
tality,  but  the  answer  which  reason  gives  is  mainly 
in  the  negative.  There  is  nothing  that  could  be 


88  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

called  evidence  that  man  continues  to  live  after  the 
dissolution  of  his  body.  Yet  Dr.  Abbott  is  con 
vinced  that  he  does  so  exist ;  he  realizes  in  himself 
"  a  nature  superior  to  disease,  decay,  mortality  ;  " 
and  who  shall  gainsay  him  ?  who  shall  say  he  is 
illogical  ?  The  evidence  he  has  upon  this  point  is 
personal  and  subjective,  and  cannot  be  imparted  to 
another.  It  has  no  logical  or  scientific  validity,  be 
cause  it  begins  and  ends  with  himself.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  reason,  but  of  religious  conviction.  But 
all  the  questions  in  dispute  between  Professor  Hux 
ley  and  Dr.  Wace  are  questions  of  reason  and  of 
evidence.  They  pertain  to  the  outward,  visible, 
concrete  world  of  history  and  of  experience,  and 
can  be  settled  in  no  court  but  the  court  of  reason. 

Dr.  Abbott  says  (and  he  assumes  to  speak  for  "  the 
great  mass  of  Christian  believers  ")  "  that  there  are 
propositions  which  men  ought  to  believe  without 
logically  satisfying  evidence."  This  is  what  the 
old  mother  church  used  to  say,  and  used  to  back  it 
up  with  the  stake  and  the  rack.  "  Ought  to  be 
lieve  ;  "  that  is,  it  is  a  man's  duty  to  believe  cer 
tain  propositions  addressed  to  his  rational  faculties, 
without  rationally  satisfying  evidence.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  the  good  doctor  did  not  cite  some 
theological  or  religious  proposition,  or  some  article 
from  the  creeds,  that  it  is  a  man's  duty  thus  to  be 
lieve.  Would  he  say  that  a  man  ought  to  believe 
any  of  the  points  in  dispute  between  Professor 
Huxley  and  Dr.  Wace  without  "  logically  satisfying 
evidence  "  ?  —  the  swine  story,  the  authorship  of 


IN   COKROBORATIOX   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY      89 

the  Gospels,  that  Jesus  said  what  he  is  reported  to 
have  said,  that  demonology  is  true,  etc.  ? 

Professor  Huxley,  I  imagine,  would  be  the  last 
man  in  the  world  to  deny  Dr.  Abbott's  proposition 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  spiritual  insight,  or  the 
religious  sense,  and  that  certainties,  or  at  least  assur 
ances  and  satisfaction,  reach  the  soul  through  these 
avenues.  The  religious  nature  or  the  poetic  and 
artistic  nature  is  not  occupied  with  logical  processes 
or  the  reasons  of  things,  but  with  impressions,  at 
tractions,  intuitions,  emotional  processes,  the  divine, 
the  beautiful,  the  enjoyable.  We  do  not  ask  of  a 
poem,  or  a  work  of  art,  or  any  work  of  pure  litera 
ture,  Is  it  true  ?  as  we  would  ask  of  a  proposition 
of  science,  or  the  statement  of  a  witness  upon  the 
stand,  or  the  declaration  of  a  creed,  Is  it  true  ? 
but,  Is  it  good  ?  is  it  powerful  ?  is  it  satisfying  ? 
does  it  move  and  nourish  us  ?  A  poem  must  have 
poetic  truth,  but  how  different  is  this  from  mathe 
matical  or  scientific  truth,  and  by  what  different 
faculties  apprehended  !  Neither  do  we  ask  of  purely 
religious  utterances  like  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
or  Paul's  Epistles,  Are  they  true  ?  but,  Do  they 
stimulate  and  exalt  our  religious  sense  ?  do  they 
quicken  and  purify  the  spirit  ?  Paul's  theology  may 
be  true  or  false  :  what  is  forever  true  and  real  is  his 
fervid  piety,  his  spiritual  power,  his  eloquent  humil 
ity,  and  his  love  for  mankind.  His  logical  faculties 
may  have  been  weak ;  the  things  which  he  believed, 
which  lay  in  his  understanding  and  satisfied  his 
reason,  may  have  been  utterly  inadequate  to  stand 


90  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

rigid  tests,  hut  for  all  that  the  power  and  value  of 
his  writings  are  beyond  question.  The  same  may 
be  said  of  some  of  the  fathers  of  the  church,  weak 
in  reason,  but  strong  in  the  spirit.  Professor  Hux 
ley  is  strong  in  reason ;  his  logic  is  a  chain  hard  to 
break ;  but  highly  spiritual  and  imaginative  natures 
would 'perhaps  find  little  satisfaction  in  his  writ 
ings.  He  is  occupied  with  objective  truth,  not  with 
subjective  impressions.  His  mind  is  strictly  scien 
tific,  and  the  results  of  his  method  of  inquiry  are 
hard  to  controvert. 

He  does  not  deny  the  moral  sense,  or  the  aesthetic 
sense,  or  the  religious  sense,  as  Dr.  Abbott  would 
seem  to  imply  ;  he  is  not  discussing  questions  that 
lie  in  either  of  these  realms,  but  questions  that 
come  within  the  scope  of  reason  and  are  matters  of 
evidence.  The  questions  of  right  and  wrong  in 
human  conduct,  of  lying,  of  stealing,  of  murder, 
etc.,  which  Dr.  Abbott  introduces,  belong  to  quite 
a  different  sphere  from  the  question  of  the  author 
ship  of  the  Gospels  or  of  the  credibility  of  the  mira 
cles. 

There  is  the  appeal  to  conscience,  the  appeal  to 
taste,  the  appeal  to  our  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things, 
and  there  is  also  the  appeal  to  reason,  to  th«  judg 
ment,  to  our  power  to  weigh  and  sift  evidence.  It 
seems  to  me  that  Dr.  Abbott  confounds  these  tilings, 
and  in  his  reply  to  Huxley  sets  up  a  man  of  straw. 
If  the  great  scientist  had  said  that  all  truth  and  cer 
tainty  come  through  the  logical  faculties,  he  would 
have  laid  himself  open  to  the  doctor's  criticism. 


IN   CORROBORATION   OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY      91 

What  he  did  say  or  imply  was  that  all  scientific,  all 
objective,  truth  comes  through  our  logical  faculties. 
These  are  his  words  :  "It  is  wrong  for  a  man  to 
say  that  he  is  certain  of  the  objective  truth  of  any  pro 
position  unless  he  can  produce  evidence  which  logi 
cally  justifies  that  certainty.'7 

In  the  outward  objective  world  a  fact  is  always  a 
fact.  It  is  always  pertinent  to  inquire  into  the  truth 
of  any  alleged  occurrence.  Did  the  sun  stand  still 
for  Joshua  to  conquer  his  enemies  ?  Is  this  a  fact  ? 
If  the  sun  stood  still  once  it  may  stand  still  again. 
Do  miracles  happen  ?  have  they  ever  happened  ? 
Is  there  a  personal  devil  ?  Are  we  surrounded  by 
a  multitude  of  good  and  bad  spirits  who  are  seeking 
to  influence  our  lives  ?  Any  objective  evidence  of 
the  truth  and  reality  of  these  things  must  hold  good 
at  all  times  and  in  all  places.  Two  and  two  always 
make  four,  and  doubtless  always  will.  But  when 
we  enter  the  region  of  morals,  we  are  in  a  world 
where  all  is  plastic,  indefinite,  relative.  Right  and 
wrong  are  so  only  under  certain  conditions.  It  may 
be  right  to  lie  and  steal  and  murder  under  certain 
extraordinary  circumstances.  "  The  certainties  of 
the  moral  and  spiritual  realm  "  to  which  Dr.  Abbott 
refers,  and  upon  which  he  says  "  all  aesthetic,  all 
domestic,  all  political  and  national  life  are  based," 
are  not  outward  demonstrable  certainties,  like  those 
of  science,  but  inward  personal  certainties,  which 
involve  our  constitution  and  our  temporary  relations 
to  the  universe  and  to  each  other. 

Dr.  Abbott  says  he  feels  but  a  languid  interest  in 


92  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

the  critical  discussion  as  to  the  authorship  of  the 
four  Gospels.  This  may  well  be.  It  may  be  be 
cause  Dr.  Abbott  is  not  primarily  interested  in  ques 
tions  of  evidence  or  in  logical  and  reasoning  pro 
cesses.  Pie  is  a  moralist  and  preacher,  and  seeks 
the  springs  of  conduct,  not  the  sources  of  logical  con 
viction.  I  believe  he  accepts  the  doctrine  of  de 
moniacal  possession  ;  it  seems  to  suit  his  emotional 
and  imaginative  type  of  mind.  But  a  man  of  sci 
ence,  as  such,  could  no  more  accept  such  an  expla 
nation  of  any  form  of  insanity  than  he  could  attribute 
crystallization  to  the  work  of  fairies  or  the  wind  and 
the  storm  to  furies.  The  authorship  of  the  four 
Gospels  may  not  be  a  vital  question  to  the  religious 
mind,  but  as  a  question  it  is  a  matter  of  evidence, 
and  not  at  all  of  personal  impression. 

If  Christianity  really  rested  upon  evidence,  if  its 
vitality  was  solely  dependent  upon  verifiable  facts 
and  considerations,  like  a  work  of  science,  it  would 
have  perished  from  the  earth  long  ago.  But  it  does 
not  live  by  its  so-called  evidences.  Christianity  is 
largely  a  matter  of  the  heart,  of  the  feelings  and  the 
emotions.  It  has  not  rested  upon  logical  evidences  ; 
its  main  hold  in  the  first  instance  has  not  been  upon 
men's  scientific  faculties,  but  upon  their  hopes,  fears, 
aspirations,  and  spiritual  cravings.  To  talk  about 
the  reasonableness  of  Christianity  is  like  talking 
about  the  reasonableness  of  magic  or  witchcraft. 
The  human  faculties  are  utterly  powerless  before 
its  main  tenets.  Christianity  has  the  vitality  of 
literature,  of  poetry  and  art.  The  Gospel  records 


IN   CORROBORATION   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY      93 

have  wonderful,  even  magical,  power  as  literature. 
They  are  true,  not  as  history,  but  as  poetry. 

The  myth  of  the  resurrection  will  be  kept  alive 
for  ages  to  come,  notwithstanding  all  that  has  been 
or  can  be  urged  against  it,  because  mankind  have 
such  a  profound  interest  in  believing  it. 

Christianity  does  not  offer  a  system  of  philosophy, 
but  a  religious  incentive.  When  it  attempts  to  play 
the  role  of  interpreter  of  the  visible  order  of  the 
universe,  or  to  satisfy  our  rational  faculties,  its  fail 
ure  is  pathetic ;  its  proofs  are  childish  ;  its  science 
is  essentially  pagan ;  its  story  of  the  fall  as  an  ex 
planation  of  the  origin  of  evil,  and  its  "  plan  of  salva 
tion  "  as  a  means  of  escape  from  that  evil,  as  science, 
do  not  rise  above  any  of  the  delusions  of  the  pagan 
world.  The  story  of  the  Chaldee  god,  Bel,  who  cut 
off  his  own  head,  moistened  the  clay  with  his  blood, 
and  then  made  man  out  of  it,  is  just  as  rational  an 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  man  as  the  one  the 
Christian  church  has  always  adhered  to.  In  fact., 
the  whole  basis  of  our  theology,  the  conception  of 
Jesus  as  a  supernatural  person  who  had  no  earthly 
father,  and  who  rose  from  the  dead  and  ascended 
bodily  up  into  heaven,  etc.,  is  essentially  pagan, 
and  belongs  to  an  order  of  things  that  has  long 
since  passed  away.  The  power  of  Christianity  is 
a  spiritual  power  ;  it  is  in  its  appeals  to  the  ideal 
of  the  gentle,  the  merciful,  the  meek,  the  forgiv 
ing,  the  pure  in  heart  —  an  ideal  which  has  such 
an  attraction  for  the  European  nations  ;  and  also  to 
the  love  of  reward  and  the  fear  of  punishment  which 


94  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

materialistic  ages  foster.  In  one  is  its  charm  for 
fine  natures ;  in  the  other  its  power  over  the  mul 
titude. 

Theological  writers  are  in  general  prone  to  mag 
nify  subjective  certitude  at  the  expense  of  objective 
proof  ;  to  place  faith  above  reason,  in  the  domain  of 
reason.  They  sneer  at  science  and  logic  as  if  in 
their  sphere  they  could  be  dispensed  with  and  some 
thing  else  be  substituted  in  their  place.  Thus  Pro 
fessor  Blackie,  in  that  vituperative  book  of  his,  "  The 
Natural  History  of  Atheism,"  —  a  book  the  style  of 
which  is  like  a  man  going  through  a  house  and  bang 
ing  the  doors  behind  him,  —  says,  as  a  finishing 
stroke  to  the  "  drivel  "  of  our  "  boastful  science," 
that  the  "  highest  cognitions  are  never  reached  by 
the  mere  exercise  of  the  knowing  faculties,  on  what 
ever  subject  exercised."  Not  even,  I  suppose,  when 
exercised  upon  the  multiplication  table  !  "  Instinct 
and  aspiration,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  are  higher  than 
knowledge ;  and  the  pretensions  of  the  merely  sci 
entific  man  to  assume  the  dictatorship  of  things  that 
be  are  not  founded  on  nature.  Many  things  can  be 
known  only  by  being  felt ;  all  vital  forces  are  fun 
damentally  unknowable  ;  but  they  exist  not  the  less 
because  would-be  philosopher  B  or  would-be  philoso 
pher  C  has  no  machinery  with  which  to  measure  or 
control  them."  Are  instinct  and  aspiration  "  cog 
nitions  "  ?  Do  they  belong  to  the  sphere  of  know 
ledge  ?  Do  they  even  point  to  any  certain  and 
demonstrable  conclusions  ?  They  may  or  they  may 
not  be  higher  than  knowledge  ;  it  is  certain  that 


IN   CORROBORATION   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY      95 

they  cannot  take  the  place  of  knowledge.  Instinct 
and  aspiration  enlightened  by  knowledge  is  the  de 
sirable  order,  is  it  not  ?  The  only  thing  the  scien 
tific  man  assumes  is  that  the  scientific  method  is  the 
only  proper  one  with  which  to  deal  with  the  objec 
tive  world  of  fact  and  experience.  If  the  professor 
meant  to  say  that  some  things  are  to  be  felt  and  not 
known,  he  is  near  the  truth.  The  facts  of  science 
are  to  be  known  ;  we  may  know  Kepler's  laws ;  we 
can  hardly  feel  them,  since  they  are  not  personal. 
But  truths  of  art,  of  poetry,  of  religion,  are  to  be 
felt,  whether  we  know  them  or  not.  They  come  to 
us  by  a  synthetical,  not  by  an  analytical  process. 

I  have  no  disposition  to  overrate  our  mere  know 
ing  faculties  ;  I  only  want  to  say  that  what  we  know 
we  know  through  them.  What  we  feel  or  fancy 
or  hope  forms  no  part  of  our  true  knowledge,  and 
may  come  through  other  avenues.  The  perception 
of  the  beautiful  is  not  a  part  of  our  knowledge  ;  nei 
ther  is  the  perception  of  the  moral  or  the  spiritual. 
These  things  are  from  within  ;  they  are  subjective 
and  not  objective,  and  not  within  the  range  of  the 
scientific  faculties.  They  are  real,  just  as  pleasure 
and  pain  are  real ;  they  are  experiences  of  the  mind. 
The  whole  sphere  of  religion  lies  here  ;  the  king 
dom  of  heaven  is  within  you,  not  in  some  outward 
relation  or  condition. 

Neither  do  I  wish  to  imply  that  there  is  any 
feud  between  science  and  true -religion,  between  that 
part  of  man's  nature  which  thirsts  for  exact  know 
ledge  —  the  red  rays  of  the  spectrum,  so  to  speak 


96  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

—  and  that  part  of  his  nature  which  we  call  the 
spiritual,  and  which  fades  off  into  the  vast  unknown 
—  the  violet  rays,  at  the  other  extreme  ;  nor  between 
either  of  these  and  his  aesthetic  nature,  his  love  of 
beautiful  forms,  though  in  different  individuals  these 
different  parts  will  not  be  equally  developed,  nor 
will  they  be  equally  active  in  different  races  and 
times.  The  feud  is  between  true  science  and  false 
science  ;  between  the  conception  of  an  order  that  is 
rational  and  one  that  is  irrational,  between  modern 
pathology  and  Indian  "  medicine." 

Exact  science  deals  with  and  can  only  deal  with 
the  objective,  the  rigid,  inexorable  world  of  law. 
With  the  subjective,  the  world  within  us,  the  world 
of  personality,  whence  comes  all  we  call  literature, 
art,  religion,  philosophy,  etc.,  it  cannot  deal.  Here 
exact  demonstration  is  not  possible  ;  all  is  plastic, 
growing,  conflicting,  aspiring,  indeterminate.  The 
personal  element  modifies  everything.  The  laws  by 
which  insensate  bodies  act  and  react  upon  each  other 
may  be  determined,  but  the  laws  by  which  persons 
act  and  react  upon  each  other  are  quite  another  mat 
ter.  In  the  subjective  world  truth  is  relative,  but 
in  the  world  of  science  truth  is  absolute.  Chemical 
elements  always  combine  in  the  same  proportions ; 
moisture  is  always  precipitated  from  the  air  under 
the  same  conditions  ;  the  operations  of  physical  na 
ture  are  uniform ;  given  the  same  conditions,  and 
the  same  results  always  follow.  Doubtless  the  same 
results  always  follow  the  same  conditions  in  the 
world  of  mind  and  personality  also,  but  here  the 


IN   CORROBORATION   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY      97 

conditions  are  more  obscure  and  more  fluctuating, 
and  science  cannot  grasp  them. 

Every  original  mind  may  have,  and  usually  does 
have,  a  philosophy  of  its  own,  a  religion  of  its  own, 
a  political  creed  of  its  own,  literary  preferences  of 
its  own ;  but  every  mind  cannot  have  a  science  of 
its  own.  The  personal  element  is  alien  to  science. 
How  many  systems  of  philosophies  have  there  been 
from  Aristotle  down  to  Spencer  ?  How  many  times 
have  the  old  problems  been  explained  ?  But  one 
man's  science  must  be  another  man's  science ;  all 
science  is  a  whole  —  a  pushing  farther  and  farther 
of  the  lines  of  knowledge  into  nature. 

The  hostility  between  the  scientific  and  the  spir 
itual,  or  the  truly  religious,  may  well  cease,  if,  in 
deed,  there  ever  has  been,  or  ever  can  be,  real 
hostility.  We  are  bound  to  give  the  reason  and  the 
understanding  full  sway  in  their  own  proper  fields. 
In  subduing  and  in  utilizing  this  world,  or  adjusting 
ourselves  to  it,  we  have  no  guide  but  science.  Yet 
science  is  not  the  main  part  of  life,  notwithstanding 
all  the  noise  it  is  making  in  the  world.  Science  is 
making  a  great  noise  in  the  world  because  it  is  doing 
a  great  work.  Literature,  art,  religion,  speculation, 
have  had  their  day ;  that  is,  the  highest  achieve 
ments  of  which  they  are  capable  are  undoubtedly  of 
the  past.  But  science  is  young ;  it  is  now  probably 
only  in  the  heat  of  its  forenoon  work.  It  is  a  little 
curious  that  man's  knowing  faculties,  the  first  to  be 
appealed  to,  should  be  the  latest  in  maturing ;  that 
he  should  worship  so  profoundly,  admire  so  justly, 


98  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

act  so  wisely  and  heroically,  while  he  yet  knew  so 
little  accurately  of  the  world  in  which  he  was  placed. 
Does  not  this  fact  point  to  the  conclusion  that  sci 
ence  is  not  the  main  part  of  life  ?  It  is  probably 
the  main  part  of  our  material  civilization,  of  that  by 
which  we  are  clothed  and  fed  and  warmed  and  trans 
ported,  defended  in  war  and  housed  in  peace  ;  but 
of  an  intrinsic  civilization  it  forms  a  less  part.  The 
old  Greek  had  little  or  no  material  civilization  in 
the  modern  sense  ;  his  civilization  was  personal  and 
mental.  What  distinguishes  the  modern  man  is  not 
his  personal  superiority,  but  the  enormous  engines 
and  deft  appliances  with  which  he  is  fended  and 
armed,  and  the  greatness  of  his  material  triumphs. 

Yet  knowledge  is  not  discredited,  reason  is  not 
supplanted.  We  can  no  more  dispense  with  them 
than  we  can  dispense  with  the  bones  in  our  bodies. 
They  furnish  the  framework  by  which  our  lives  are 
upheld.  All  the  certainty  we  have  of  the  order  of 
the  objective  world  comes  through  our  rational  facul 
ties. 

The  agnostic  does  not  merely  say  that  all  know 
ledge  is  imperfect  and  fragmentary,  nor  that  all  cer 
tainty  is  based  on  the  logical  faculty  ;  but  simply 
that  the  understanding  goes  upon  evidence  ;  that  in 
this  world  we  have  no  guide  to  objective  truth  but 
our  rational  faculties.  He  finds  no  room  for  what 
our  religious  brethren  call  faith,  because  faith,  as 
commonly  understood,  is  a  fatal  undertow  that 
swamps  and  drowns  reason.  He  finds  many  things 
and  enjoys  many  things  which  he  cannot  under- 


IN   CORROBORATION   OF    PROFESSOR   HUXLEY      99 

stand ;  he  is  not  a  stranger  to  the  thrill  of  awe  and 
reverence  in  the  presence  of  the  great  mystery  of 
the  universe  ;  but  all  propositions  relative  to  the 
plans,  ways,  and  nature  of  that  mystery  that  are 
not  verifiable,  he  fights  shy  of. 


VII 

THE   MODERN   SKEPTIC 

A  RECENT  writer  upon  skepticism  describes  the 
-£•*-  skeptic  as  generally  a  "  malcontent,"  not  only 
in  religion,  but  in  politics  and  in  society.  "  He  is 
the  personification  of  the  ancient  belief  regarding  the 
souls  of  the  unburied  dead,"  that  is,  he  goes  wan 
dering  about  homeless  and  disconsolate.  But  few 
honest  skeptics,  I  imagine,  will  see  themselves  in 
this  portrait.  The  religious  skeptics  of  to-day  are 
a  very  large  class,  larger  than  ever  before,  and  they 
are  by  no  means  the  restless  and  unhappy  set  they 
are  here  described.  On  the  contrary  they  are  among 
the  most  hopeful,  intelligent,  patriotic,  upright,  and 
wisely  conservative  of  our  citizens.  Let  us  see ; 
probably  four  fifths  of  the  literary  men  in  this  coun 
try  and  in  Great  Britain,  and  a  still  larger  per  cent 
on  the  Continent,  are  what  would  be  called  skeptics  ; 
a  large  proportion  of  journalists  and  editors  are 
skeptics ;  half  the  lawyers,  more  than  half  the  doc 
tors,  a  large  per  cent  of  the  teachers,  a  large  per 
cent  of  the  business  men,  almost  all  the  scientific 
men,  and  a  great  many  orthodox  clergymen,  if  they 
were  to  avow  their  real  convictions,  would  confess  to 
some  shade  of  skepticism  or  religious  unbelief. 
They  find  the  creeds  in  which  they  were  nurtured 


THE   MODERN    SKEPTIC  101 

no  longer  credible.  Indeed,  there  are  but  few  great 
names  in  literature,  in  science  or  philosophy,  for  a 
hundred  years,  that  could  not  be  convicted  of  some 
shade  of  religious  skepticism  —  skepticism  about  the 
miracles,  the  sacraments,  vicarious  atonement,  origi 
nal  sin,  or  some  other  dogma. 

The  lawyers  are  probably  less  inclined  to  skepti 
cism  than  the  doctors,  because  the  legal  mind  is 
closer  akin  to  the  theological  mind ;  it  has  chiefly 
to  do  with  arbitrary  and  artificial  questions  and  dis 
tinctions,  and  is  brought  less  under  the  influence  of 
natural  causes  than  that  of  the  medical  practitioner. 
The  lawyer  falls  into  personal  and  ex  parte  views  ; 
he  makes  the  cause  of  his  client  his  own ;  and  his 
whole  training  is  to  beget  a  habit  of  mind  quite  the 
opposite  of  the  scientific.  The  physicians  were  the 
first  to  discredit  witchcraft  and  to  write  against  it, 
but  the  lawyers  cherished  and  defended  the  belief 
nearly  as  long  as  did  the  clergy.  The  legalism,  too, 
which  has  invaded  Christianity,  and  which  is  such 
a  repulsive  feature  in  certain  of  the  creeds,  espe 
cially  that  of  Calvinism,  is  the  work  of  the  attorney 
habit  of  mind. 

The  writer  referred  to  is  correct,  however,  in 
saying  that  "  faith  is  a  living  force  mostly  in  active 
temperaments."  There  is  less  skepticism  among 
the  farmers  and  among  the  laboring  classes  generally 
except  maybe  here  and  there  in  large  cities,  and 
very  little  among  the  women.  Women  are  slow  to 
reason,  but  quick  to  feel  and  to  believe,  and  they 
cannot  face  the  chill  of  the  great  cosmic  out  of  doors 


102  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

without  being  clad  in  some  tangible  faith.  The 
mass  of  the  people  are  indifferent  rather  than  skepti 
cal.  They  are  undoubtedly  drifting  away  from  the 
creeds  of  their  fathers,  but  they  have  not  yet  en 
tirely  lost  sight  of  them.  "  The  various  modes  of 
worship  which  prevailed  in  the  Roman  world,"  says 
Gibbon,  "  were  all  considered  by  the  people  as 
equally  true ;  by  the  philosopher  as  equally  false, 
and  by  the  magistrate  as  equally  useful."  This  is 
probably  very  much  the  case  amid  all  nations,  at  all 
times. 

Men  of  large  action,  too,  generals,  statesmen,  sea 
captains,  explorers,  usually  share  the  religion  of 
their  contemporaries.  Frederick  the  Great  is  per 
haps  the  most  notable  exception  to  this  rule.  A 
popular  religion  is  always  definite  and  practical, 
clothes  itself  in  concrete  forms,  and  appeals  to  the 
active  temperament.  The  man  of  action  has  little 
time  for  reflection,  to  return  upon  himself  and  en 
tertain  intellectual  propositions.  Faith  is  an  earlier 
and  in  many  ways  a  healthier  act  of  the  mind  than 
reason,  because  faith  leads  to  action,  while  reason 
makes  us  hesitate  and  put  off  a  decision.  The 
church  has  always  had  trouble  with  philosophers 
and  physicians,  with  men  who  wanted  to  know  the 
reason  of  things  and  trace  the  connection  of  cause 
and  effect.  There  was  little  skepticism  in  Greece 
until  after  the  sophists  appeared,  the  critics,  men  of 
ideas,  who  directed  a  free  play  of  thought  upon  all 
objects  and  subjects,  a  type  of  mind  which  begat  the 
philosophers  of  Athens,  but  not  the  great  poets  and 


THE  MODERN  SKEPTIC  103 

artists.  They  came  earlier,  when  there  was  more 
faith  and  less  reason  in  Greece. 

In  fact,  the  great  days  of  Greece  were  not  when 
its  head  was  the  clearest,  but  when  its  patriotism 
and  religion  were  the  most  fervent.  As  the  heart 
cools  the  head  clears.  Those  great  emotional  up 
risings,  those  religious  enthusiasms,  which  come  in 
time  to  all  nations,  are  not  days  of  right  reason  nor 
of  correct  science ;  still  they  are  the  periods  of  his 
tory  we  like  best  to  dwell  upon. 

It  is  always  easier  to  believe  than  to  deny.  Our 
minds  are  naturally  affirmative  ;  it  is  not  till  the 
second  or  third  thought  that  doubt  begins.  Belief 
is  so  vital  and  necessary  that  one  would  say  the 
tendency  was  made  strong  at  the  perpetual  risk  of 
extra  belief  and  superstition  ;  it  were  better  to  be 
lieve  too  much  than  not  enough.  Hence  mankind 
have  always  believed  too  much,  as  if  to  make  sure 
that  the  anchor  hold.  To  believe  just  enough,  to 
free  his  mind  from  all  cant  and  from  all  illusion, 
and  see  things  just  as  in  themselves  they  are,  is  the 
aim  of  the  philosopher  or  of  the  true  skeptic. 

Men's  minds  are  nearly  always  under  a  spell  of 
some  kind.  What  a  spell  the  mind  of  Europe  was 
under  during  the  Crusades  !  What  .a  foolish  and 
misdirected  enthusiasm  this  uprising  seems  to  us, 
whose  minds  are  under  some  other  spell,  say  the 
scientific  spell.  What  a  spell  the  same  mind  was 
under  for  centuries  with  reference  to  witchcraft, 
even  such  a  man  as  Sir  Matthew  Hale  believing  in 
it  and  defending  it.  Here  was  an  astute  legal  mind, 


104  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

and  an  incorruptible  judge,  a  man  who  could  sift  evi 
dence  and  expose  a  false  witness,  and  yet  the  spell  of 
his  times  in  regard  to  witchcraft  was  upon  him,  and 
he  could  not  escape  it.  The  mind  reasons  in  such 
cases,  but  it  reasons  inside  of  a  magical  circle,  the 
bounds  of  which  it  cannot  pass,  cannot  see.  Most 
of  us  reason  inside  of  a  circle,  when  we  reason  at 
all,  with  reference  to  our  religion ;  we  are  under  its 
spell,  its  illusion.  What  a  spell  the  mind  of  Chris 
tendom  has  been  under  with  reference  to  miracles 
—  could  not  get  or  see  beyond  the  magic  circle. 
The  Catholic  mind  is  still  under  this  spell.  What 
a  spell  the  mind  of  the  world  was  under  in  the 
third  and  fourth  centuries  with  reference  to  magic, 
and  in  later  times  with  reference  to  astrology,  and 
alchemy  and  demoniac  possessions !  The  skeptic 
sees  how  faith  or  belief  tends  perpetually  to  fulfill 
itself.  If  I  believed  in  ghosts  I  should  doubtless 
see  ghosts.  People  always  have.  Those  who  be 
lieve  in  spiritism  have  wonderful  things  to  relate ; 
but  to  a  cool,  unbiased  person  not  one  scrap  of  evi 
dence  is  forthcoming.  In  a  credulous  age  miracles 
happen,  but  never  in  a  scientific  one.  The  evi 
dences  of  the  popular  religion  are  evidences  only  to 
those  who  are  already  convinced.  The  man  who 
believes  in  prayer  —  his  prayers  are  answered  ;  the 
more  sincere  the  belief  the  more  sure  the  answer. 
Sincerity  of  belief  is  of  itself  a  blessing  and  makes  us 
stronger.  Faith  cures,  of  which  we  are  now  hearing 
so  much,  have  their  root  in  this  principle,  as  do  also 
the  power  of  charms,  amulets,  symbols,  etc.  Curses, 


THE   MODEKN   SKEPTIC  105 

anathemas,  tend  to  fulfill  themselves  when  the 
imagination  is  impressed  by  them.  Think  what 
power  for  mischief  must  have  resided  in  the  curses 
of  the  church  when  men's  minds  were  under  the 
theological  spell  ;  excommunication  made  man  an 
outcast  in  the  universe.  The  things  we  fear,  no 
matter  how  imaginary,  stamp  our  lives.  Of  the 
things  we  love  the  same  is  true.  Plutarch  tells  of 
a  certain  bird  which  the  ancients  used  to  look  upon 
to  cure  jaundice  —  this  was  an  early  form  of  faith 
cure.  The  opposite  effect,  or  faith  kill,  is  related 
with  regard  to  a  bird  in  Ceylon,  called  the  devil 
bird.  This  bird  makes  a  doleful  wailing  by  night, 
and  as  it  is  seldom  seen,  a  dread  superstition  has  gath 
ered  about  it.  The  natives  have  a  fixed  belief  that 
whoever  sees  the  bird  will  surely  die  shortly  after, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  usually  proves  true. 
The  native  is  so  frightened  and  so  overpowered  by 
his  faith  in  the  evil  omen  that  he  refuses  food,  goes 
into  a  decline,  and  soon  dies.  Thus  faith  kills  and 
faith  cures.  Faith  in  your  physician  is  often  worth 
more  to  you  than  his  medicines  ;  a  soldier's  faith 
in  his  general  doubles  or  trebles  his  force. 

The  skeptic  sees  the  benefits  of  a  strong,  active 
faith,  irrespective  of  the  object  toward  which  it  is 
directed.  Faith  in  one's  self  and  in  the  justice  of 
one's  cause  is  always  half  the  battle.  It  is  not  for 
nothing  that  we  have  had  so  long  thundered  into 
our  ears  the  benefits  of  belief  and  the  dangers  of 
skepticism  and  doubt.  And  it  is  not  because  the 
things  we  have  been  asked  to  believe  are  in  them- 


106  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

selves  true,  but  because  the  very  act  of  belief  is  in 
itself  wholesome  and  sets  the  current  going,  while 
doubt  paralyzes  and  leads  to  stagnation.  But  how 
shall  we  believe  a  thing  unless  we  know  it  to  be 
true  ?  Ah,  there  is  the  rub  !  But  man  in  all  ages 
has  been  the  victim  of  delusions,  and  the  gain  to  him 
lias  been  that  they  have  kept  him  going ;  that  they 
have  kept  him  working  and  striving.  The  great 
periods  in  history  have  been  periods  of  strong  faith, 
of  serious  affirmation,  not  of  denial,  nor  yet  of  rea 
son.  Yet  I  would  not  say  that  faith  alone  has  ever 
made  a  people  or  an  individual  great.  Spain,  as  a 
nation,  probably  has  as  much  faith  as  ever,  and 
yet  how  is  she  fallen  from  the  three  hundred  years 
ago.  But  faith  is  more  frequently  the  parent  of 
great  deeds  than  reason  or  denial.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  nation,  faith  is  best.  There  can  be 
no  strong  feeling  of  nationality  without  a  certain 
narrowness  and  unreasonableness.  The  philosophers 
of  Athens  no  doubt  weakened  the  feeling  of  nation 
ality.  They  weakened  the  faith  in  the  nation's 
gods ;  they  had  reference  to  universal  ends.  A 
proud,  intense,  exclusive  nation  like  the  Hellenes 
had  a  kind  of  faith  in  itself  and  in  its  privileges 
and  destiny,  which,  however  conducive  to  the 
growth  and  strength  of  the  nation,  could  not  stand 
the  light  of  reason  and  universal  knowledge. 

The  wise  skeptic  also  sees  that  faith  or  supersti 
tion,  rather  than  reason,  must  be  the  guide  of  the 
mass  of  mankind.  What  Strabo  said  nineteen  cen 
turies  ago  still  holds  true.  "  It  is  impossible,"  said 


THE   MODERN  SKEPTIC  107 

the  old  Greek,  "  to  conduct  women  and  the  gross 
multitude,  and  to  render  them  holy,  pious,  and  up 
right  by  the  precepts  of  reason  and  philosophy  • 
superstition  or  the  fear  of  the  gods  must  be  called 
in  aid,  the  influence  of  which  is  founded  on  fiction 
or  prodigies.  For  the  thunder  of  Jupiter,  the  aegis 
of  Minerva,  the  trident  of  Neptune,  the  torches  and 
snakes  of  the  Furies,  the  spears  of  the  gods  adorned 
with  ivy,  and  the  whole  ancient  theology  are  all 
fables  which  the  legislators  who  formed  the  political 
constitution  of  states  employ  as  bugbears  to  over 
awe  the  credulous  and  simple.'' 

But  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual,  of  a 
serene,  well-balanced,  well-ordered  life,  reason  is  the 
best.  "  Prove  all  things,  hold  fast  that  which  is 
good,"  is  the  voice  of  the  cool,  disinterested  reason, 
directed  to  the  individual.  And  when  one  sets  out 
to  prove  all  things,  what  guide  can  he  have  other 
than  reason  ?  This  is  "  the  light  that  lighteneth 
every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world,"  this  and 
conscience  ;  but  in  the  region  of  speculative  opinion 
and  belief,  conscience  plays  a  very  subordinate  part. 
"  To  reconcile  theory  and  fact,"  says  Cardinal  New 
man,  "  is  almost  an  instinct  of  the  mind."  It  cer 
tainly  is  in  our  day,  more  so,  probably,  than  ever 
before.  No  intelligent  man  can  now  conscientiously 
humble  his  reason  before  his  faith,  as  good  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  boasted  he  could.  He  said,  "  Men 
that  live  according  to  the  right  rule  and  law  of 
reason,  live  but  in  their  own  kind,  as  brutes  do  in 
theirs."  He  said  we  are  to  believe,  "  not  only  above 


108  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

but  contrary  to  reason  and  against  the  argument  of 
our  proper  senses."  A  good  many  other  people  be 
lieved  so  too  about  that  time.  Poor  Ann  Arkens, 
young,  intelligent,  and  beautiful,  was  stretched  upon 
the  rack,  then  burned  with  fagots  and  blown  with 
gunpowder  at  Smithfield,  all  because  she  could  not 
believe,  against  the  "argument  of  her  proper  senses," 
in  transubstantiation,  that  the  bread  and  wine  the 
priest  had  mumbled  over  remained  anything  but 
bread  and  wine. 

The  skepticism  of  our  day  is  mainly  the  result  of 
science,  of  the  enormous  growth  of  our  natural 
knowledge.  In  its  light  the  old  theology  and  cos 
mology  look  artificial  and  arbitrary  ;  they  do  riot  fit 
into  the  scheme  of  creation  as  science  discloses  it. 
Our  science  is  undoubtedly  ignorant  enough.  We 
know  no  more  about  final  causes,  after  science  has 
done  its  best,  than  we  did  before,  but  familiarity 
with  the  laws  and  processes  of  the  world  does  un 
doubtedly  beget  a  habit  of  mind  unfavorable  to  the 
personal  and  arbitrary  view  of  things  which  the 
old  theology  has  inculcated.  Science  has  at  least 
taught  us  that  the  universe  is  all  of  a  piece  or 
homogeneous  ;  that  man  is  a  part  of  nature  ;  that 
there  are  no  breaks  or  faults  in  the  scheme  of  crea 
tion,  and  can  be  none.  One  thing  follows  from 
another  or  is  evolved  from  another,  the  whole 
system  of  things  is  vital,  and  not  mechanical,  and 
nothing  is  interpolated  or  arbitrarily  thrust  in  from 
without.  All  our  natural  knowledge  is  based  upon 
these  principles.  It  is  only  in  theology  that  we 


THE    MODERN   SKEPTIC  109 

encounter  notions  that  run  counter  to  them,  and  that 
require  our  acceptance  of  doctrines  in  which  our 
powers  of  reason  and  observation  can  have  no  part. 
The  man  of  science  has  no  trouble  in  discover 
ing  God  objectively  5  that  is,  as  the  all-embracing 
force  and  vitality  that  pervades  and  upholds  the 
physical  universe  —  in  fact,  he  can  discover  little 
else.  Knock  at  any  door  he  will,  he  finds  the. 
Eternal  there  to  answer.  But  his  search  discloses 
no  human  attributes,  nothing  he  can  name  in  the 
terms  he  applies  to  man,  nothing  that  suggests 
personality.  He  can  no  more  ascribe  personality  to 
infinite  power  than  he  can  ascribe  form  to  infinite 
space.  Yet  he  knows  infinite  space  must  exist  j  it 
is  a  necessity  of  the  mind,  though  it  drives  one 
crazy  to  try  to  conceive  of  it.  It  is  a  matter  we 
apprehend,  to  use  a  distinction  of  Coleridge,  but 
cannot  comprehend.  In  the  same  way  we  know  an 
infinite  power,  not  ourselves,  exists,  but  it  passes 
the  utmost  stretch  of  comprehension.  This,  I  say, 
is  disclosing  God  objectively,  as  a  palpable,  unavoid 
able  fact.  To  disclose  God  subjectively  through 
the  conscience,  or  as  an  intimate  revelation  to  the 
spirit,  that  is  to  experience  religion,  as  usually 
understood.  The  person  finds  God  by  looking  in 
ward,  instead  of  outward,  and  finds  him  as  a  person. 
Some  religious  souls  have  a  most  intense  and  vivid 
conception  of  God  subjectively,  who  cannot  find 
him  by  an  outward  search  at  all.  Cardinal  New 
man  is  such  a  man.  He  says  the  world  seems 
simply  to  give  the  lie  to  that  great  truth  of  which 


110  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

his  whole  being  is  so  full.  "  If  I  looked  into  a  mir 
ror  and  did  not  see  my  face,  I  should  have  the  sort 
of  feeling  which  actually  comes  upon  me  when  I 
look  into  this  living,  busy  world  and  see  no  reflec 
tion  of  its  Creator."  What  he  calls  this  power,  of 
which  all  visible  things  are  the  fruit  and  outcome, 
does  not  appear.  Probably  nature  simply  ;  but  is 
nature  something  apart  from  God  ? 

While  this  inward  revelation  of  God  to  the  spirit 
may  be  the  most  convincing  of  all  proofs  to  the 
person  experiencing  it,  yet  it  can  have  little  force 
with  another,  little  force  as  an  argument,  because, 
in  the  first  place,  it  cannot  be  communicated  or  de 
monstrated.  All  independent  objective  truth  is 
capable  of  being  communicated  and  of  being  verified  ; 
but  this  fact  of  which  Newman  is  so  certain,  he 
confesses  himself,  he  cannot  bring  out  with  any 
logical  force.  It  is  its  own  proof.  And  in  the 
second  place,  because  the  world  knows  how  delu 
sive  these  personal  impressions  and  inward  voices 
are.  Men  have  heard  an  inward  voice  or  felt  an 
inward  prompting  that  has  led  them  to  commit  the 
most  outrageous  crimes  against  humanity,  to  burn 
witches  and  heretics,  to  mortify  their  own  bodies,  or 
to  throw  themselves  from  precipices.  Good  men 
and  wise  men  have  been  equally  sure,  upon  subjec 
tive  evidence,  of  the  existence  of  the  devil ;  they 
have  heard  his  promptings,  his  suggestions,  and 
they  have  fought  against  him.  Our  fathers  were 
just  as  sure,  upon  personal  grounds,  of  the  existence 
of  the  devil  as  Newman  is  of  the  existence  of  God. 


THE   MODERN   SKEPTIC  111 

One  may  personify  the  whisperings,  or  the  motives 
of  evil  within  himself,  and  give  it  a  bad  name,  and 
he  may  personify  the  nobler  and  higher  voices  within 
him  and  give  it  a  good  name.  In  either  case  it  is  a 
subjective  phenomenon,  which  the  man  bent  upon 
exact  knowledge  cannot  attach  much  weight  to. 
Satan  walked  and  talked  with  the  Biblical  writers, 
the  same  as  did  God  ;  he  even  talked  face  to  face 
with  God  himself.  Not  long  since  a  respectable 
mechanic  in  one  of  the  large  cities  believed  himself 
bewitched ;  the  delusion  worked  upon  him  till  he 
took  to  his  bed,  and  finally  he  actually  died,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  bewitched  to  death. 

It  is  in  the  light  of  such  facts  and  considerations 
as  these  that  the  so-called  skeptic  refuses  to  credit 
all  people  tell  him  about  their  knowledge  of  God. 
So  that  he  is  finally  compelled  to  rest  upon  the  God 
of  force  and  law  of  outward  nature. 

It  is  also  to  be  said  that  the  decay  of  religious  be 
lief  in  our  times  is  rather  a  decay  of  creeds  and 
dogmas  than  of  the  spirit  of  true  religion  —  religion 
as  love,  as  an  aspiration  after  the  highest  good.  If 
we  regard  it  as  a  decay  of  Christianity  itself,  it  is  to 
be  remembered  that  Christianity  bears  no  such  inti 
mate  relation  to  modern  life,  either  the  life  of  the 
individual  or  to  the  life  of  the  state,  as  polytheism 
bore  to  the  life  of  the  ancient  world.  It  is  rather 
of  the  nature  of  an  aside  in  modern  life,  while  in 
Greece  and  Rome  and  in  Judea  the  national  religion 
was  the  principal  matter.  The  whole  drama  of 
history  clustered  around  and  was  the  illustration  of 


112  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

this  central  fact.  The  state  and  the  church  were 
one.  The  national  gods  were  invoked  and  deferred 
to  on  all  occasions.  Every  festival  was  in  honor  of 
some  divinity  ;  the  public  games  were  presided  over 
by  some  god.  In  going  to  war,  or  in  concluding 
peace,  solemn  sacrifices  were  offered,  and  the  favor 
of  the  gods  was  solicited. 

In  fact,  in  the  ancient  world  there  was  but  one 
principle,  —  the  religious  principle.  This  dominated 
everything,  —  science,  literature,  the  arts,  the  state, 
the  nation,  the  individual ;  everything  revolved 
about  and  was  subordinated  to  this  rule.  Men  lived 
on  the  most  familiar  terms  with  the  supernatural 
powers.  In  Mohammedan  countries  there  is  still  but 
one  principle.  But  among  the  European  nations  the 
religious  principle  is  but  one  of  two ;  it  is  relegated 
to  the  sects,  and  is  aired  once  a  week.  The  mass  of 
modern  life  is  secular  and  not  religious.  The  mod 
ern  state  is  not  even  decently  moral.  The  attitude 
of  the  great  European  powers  toward  each  other 
to-day  is  precisely  that  of  so  many  dogs  growling  at 
each  other  over  their  bones. 

"  The  religion  of  polytheism,"  says  Gibbon,  "  was 
not  merely  a  speculative  doctrine  professed  in  the 
schools  or  preached  in  the  temples."  On  the  contrary, 
its  deities  and  its  rites  "  were  closely  interwoven 
with  every  circumstance  of  business  or  pleasure,  of 
public  or  private  life." 

In  comparison  with  many  Oriental  people  we  are 
an  irreligious  and  God-forsaken  nation.  No  gods 
are  recognized  by  the  state,  and  in  1796  Washington 


THE   MODERN   SKEPTIC  113 

signed  a  treaty  with  a  Mohammedan  country,  in 
which  it  was  declared  that  "  the  government  of  the 
United  States  is  not  in  any  sense  founded  on  the 
Christian  religion." 

Hence,  whatever  we  owe  to  Christianity,  we  can 
not  begin  to  owe  to  it  what  the  ancient  peoples 
owed  to  their  religions.  Great  Britain  still  main 
tains  the  union  of  church  and  state,  but  it  is  a  forced 
and  artificial  union ;  it  is  a  union  and  not  a  oneness, 
a  matter  of  law  and  not  of  life,  as  in  ancient  times. 
Yet  ours  is  an  age  of  faith,  too,  —  faith  in  science,  in 
the  essential  soundness  and  goodness  of  the  world. 
We  are  skeptical  about  the  gods,  but  we  are  no 
longer  skeptical  about  things,  or  about  duty,  or  vir 
tue,  or  manliness,  or  the  need  of  well-ordered  lives. 
The  putting  out  of  the  candles  on  the  altar  has  not 
put  out  the  sun  and  stars  too.  We  affirm  more  than 
we  deny.  We  no  longer  deny  the  old  religions,  but 
accept  them  and  see  where  they  belong.  Man  is 
fast  reaching  the  point  where  he  does  not  need  these 
kinds  of  props  and  stays,  the  love  of  future  good  or 
the  fear  of  future  evil.  There  was  a  time  when  the 
pulling  down  of  the  temple  pulled  the  sky.  down 
with  it,  all  motives  for  right  were  extinguished ;  but 
that  time  is  past.  Righteousness  has  a  scientific 
basis  ;  the  anger  of  heaven  descends  upon  the  un 
godly  in  the  shape  of  penalties  for  violated  laws. 
A  comet  in  the  heavens  is  no  longer  a  fearful  por 
tent,  but  sewer  gas  in  your  house  is.  Cholera  is 
not  a  visitation  for  ungodliness,  but  for  uncleanli- 
ness,  which  is  a  form  of  ungodliness,  We  cannot 


114  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

pray  with  the  old  faith,  but  we  can  fight  intemper 
ance  with  more  than  the  old  zeal.  We  cannot  love 
God  as  our  fathers  did,  but  we  can  love  our  neigh 
bor  much  more.  The  spirit  of  charity  and  helpful 
ness  has  increased  in  the  world  as  the  old  beliefs 
have  declined.  The  skeptics  and  disbelievers  could 
never  slaughter  each  other  as  the  Christians  have. 
Science  substitutes  a  rational  basis  for  right  conduct 
in  place  of  the  artificial  basis  of  the  church.  The 
anger  of  the  gods  no  longer  threatens  us  ;  the  dis 
pleasure  of  the  church  is  no  longer  a  dread ;  but  we 
know  that  virtue  alone  brings  satisfaction.  We 
cannot  read  the  Bible  with  the  old  eyes,  but  we 
read  nature  with  new  eyes. 

Probably  religion  has  long  ceased  to  play  any  im 
portant  part  in  the  great  movements  of  the  world. 
A  religious  war  is  no  longer  possible.  In  our  two 
great  wars  and  in  the  founding  of  this  republic,  reli 
gious  belief  was  not  concerned  at  all.  The  skeptics 
were  just  as  ardent  and  just  as  brave  and  patriotic 
as  the  believers.  The  author  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  a  skeptic.  The  policy  of  England, 
France,  Germany,  Russia,  is  it  in  any  way  inspired 
by  the  Christian  religion  ?  Never  were  so  much 
courage  and  hope  and  benevolence  and  virtue  in 
the  world  as  to-day,  and  never  before  were  the  ties 
of  the  old  faiths  so  weak. 


VIII 

THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY 

death  of  Tennyson  the  other  day  with  a 
copy  of  Shakespeare  in  his  hand  instead  of  the 
Bible  or  Prayer  Book,  and  with  only  his  family  and 
physician  by  his  bedside,  does  not  seem  to  have 
sent  any  shudder  through  the  orthodox  religious 
world.  That  a  great  poet  in  his  last  moments 
should  seek  to  lean  upon  the  spirit  of  another  great 
poet,  gone  before,  is  natural  enough  ;  too  natural,  one 
would  think,  to  suit  the  supernaturalists.  Tenny 
son's  was  a  profoundly  religious  nature,  but  evi 
dently  he  had  worked  his  way  out  of  the  quagmire 
of  the  theological  creeds.  It  was  a  significant  death 
bed,  science  watching  the  body  and  literature  min 
istering  to  the  soul.  Where  the  parish  priest  was 
we  are  not  told ;  men's  thoughts  in  their  last  hours 
are  turning  less  and  less  to  him.  The  faith  that 
really  saves,  saves  from  an  ignoble  terror  that  im 
poverishes  life  and  makes  death  hideous,  is  no 
longer  in  the  keeping  of  our  theological  doctors. 
Kenan  passed  away  with  far  more  cheerfulness  and 
composure,  if  reports  be  true,  than  did  Cardinal  Man 
ning.  The  serenity  of  Renan,  as  he  said  of  his 
friend  Calmann,  "  was  that  of  a  good  man,  sure  of 
being  in  accord  with  superior  rule."  Renan  seems 


116  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

to  have  written  his  last  book,  "  Recollections  and 
Letters,"  with  the  thought  of  death  ever  present 
with  him,  yet  the  gayety  of  it,  the  buoyancy  and 
sweetness,  are  remarkable. 

The  atmosphere  of  our  time  is  fast  being  cleared 
of  the  fumes  and  deadly  gases  that  arose  during  the 
carboniferous  age  of  theology.  Renan  has  been  one 
of  the  forces,  with  his  divine  gayety  and  serene  rea 
son,  that  has  helped  dispel  them.  Professor  Hux 
ley,  in  his  recent  volume  of  essays  and  discourses, 
drives  them  before  him  like  a  gale  from  the  moun 
tains.  It  would  hardly  seem  possible  for  any  self- 
respecting  theologian  to  again  stand  up  for  what  is 
called  the  historicity  of  the  New  Testament  miracles. 
Yet  there  be  those  who  look  upon  all  this  with 
uneasiness  and  distrust. 

"  Is  the  spiritual  sense  decadent  ?  "  asks  one  of 
our  current  religious  journals,  meaning  by  the  spir 
itual  sense  the  faculty  to  discern  the  truth  of  the 
current  religious  dogmas.  The  writer  is  forced  to 
the  conclusion  that  this  sense  is  weakening,  but  he 
takes  refuge  in  the  thought  that  the  objects  of  faith 
are  like  the  stars  in  the  sky  which  the  sun  (science) 
may  obscure,  but  cannot  blot  out.  It  says  the  ag 
nosticism  of  Huxley  and  his  kind  is  but  the  confes 
sion  of  a  child  that  it  cannot  see  by  morning 
light  the  moon  which  it  saw  at  bedtime.  The  ar 
gument  of  the  religious  editor  frankly  admits  that 
there  is  light  in  the  world,  and  that  it  is  no  tempo 
rary  or  uncertain  rushlight  either,  but  the  light  of 
the  real  heavenly  luminary  itself.  Sunlight  is  from 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY      117 

above,  too,  is  it  not  ?  and  quite  as  needful,  though 
not  quite  as  bewitching  and  misleading  as  moon 
light  or  starlight.  The  objects  of  faith  may  be  real 
and  again  they  may  not ;  the  proof  is  wanting.  At 
any  rate,  it  is  at  last  daylight  in  the  world,  and  the 
lights  that  are  obscured  or  that  fade  away  and  are 
lost,  it  seems  to  me,  we  can  very  well  do  without. 
"VYe  shall  never  again  believe  in  angels,  or  demoni 
acal  possessions,  or  in  witchcraft,  or  in  spooks,  or  in 
spirit  rappings,  or  in  charms  and  incantations,  or 
in  the  lake  of  fire,  or  in  the  city  of  the  golden 
streets.  In  this  morning  of  the  world  man  is  no 
longer  the  child  that  cried  for  the  moon  of  the  night 
before. 

The  analogy  suggested  by  our  religious  editor  is 
no  doubt  a  true  one ;  the  difference  between  our 
times  and  the  times  of  our  fathers  is  mainly  in  the 
greater  light  of  our  day,  the  light  of  exact  science. 
"We  see  things  as  they  are ;  we  see  how  and  where 
the  delusions  of  the  past  arose,  that  they  were  inci 
dent  to  the  general  obscurity,  that  these  portentous 
forms  that  were  so  real  and  threatening  to  our 
fathers  are  either  shadows  or  harmless  inanimate 
objects.  No  doubt  we  have  lost  something,  some 
thing  in  the  direction  of  poetry  and  religion,  the  an 
thropomorphic  gift.  Man  cannot  make  the  world 
in  his  own  image,  or  project  himself  into  it  as  in 
the  prescientific  ages.  Nature  is  not  so  plastic  and 
neutral  in  the  light  of  the  sun  as  under  the  light  of 
the  moon.  The  day  has  its  own  obscurities  and 
illusions,  but  they  are  not  those  of  the  night. 


118  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

Things  take  on  less  portentous  forms ;  the  eye  and 
not  the  imagination  rules.  What  power  there  is  in 
mere  darkness  or  obscurity  itself !  Take  a  person 
of  unenlightened  mind  and  see  what  things  he  will 
accept,  simply  because  they  are  mysterious  and  tran 
scend  experience.  In  my  youth  the  belief  in  ghosts, 
haunted  houses,  witches,  signs  and  warnings,  was 
almost  universal  among  country  people ;  now  there 
is  hardly  a  vestige  of  such  belief  left.  The  change 
indicated  is  not  merely  a  change  of  weather,  as  Car 
dinal  Newman  thought ;  it  is  more  than  that,  — 
it  is  the  passing  of  one  geological  period  into  an 
other. 

The  world  is  real,  and  goes  its  own  way.  The 
poet  has  a  harder  problem  before  him ;  the  priest 
has  a  harder  problem  before  him,  but  the  men  who 
are  to  do  the  world's  real  work  find  the  problem 
much  easier,  —  I  mean  the  men  who  are  to  clothe, 
and  feed,  and  shelter,  and  warm,  and  transport  it ; 
who  are  to  fight  its  battles  and  subdue  and  re 
claim  its  waste  places.  Science  has  its  own  mys 
teries  and  sublimities,  and  they  have  this  advantage 
—  they  are  real ;  they  are  not  the  reflection  of  the 
mood  or  the  fancy  of  the  observer ;  they  are  not  the 
result  of  obscurity,  but  of  the  limitations  of  the  hu 
man  mind.  Knowledge  outstrips  imagination. 

Feeling,  emotion,  falls  helpless  before  the  reve 
lations  of  science.  The  heights  and  the  depths  that 
surround  us,  and  the  world  of  vital  forces  in  which 
our  lives  are  embosomed,  and  which  the  darkness  of 
earlier  ages  did  not  permit  us  to  see,  baffle  speech. 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY     119 

Magnitude,  perspective,  order,  system,  connection,  is 
what  the  light  of  science  reveals  to  us.  How  much, 
sentiment,  how  much  ppetry  and  religion  we  can  read 
in  these  things  depends  upon  us.  The  nearness,  the 
privacy,  the  fireside  charm,  and  the  dark-closet  fear 
of  nature  are  gone  ;  in  short,  its  purpose,  its  affection 
or  hatred,  as  directed  to  you  and  me.  The  universe 
is  going  its  own  way  with  no  thought  of  us ;  to 
keep  in  its  currents  is  our  life,  to  cross  them  is  our 
death.  This  discovery  sends  the  cosmic  chill,  with 
which  so  many  of  us  are  familiar  in  these  days ;  it 
makes  the  religious  mind  gasp  for  breath,  but  we 
must  face  it,  and  still  find  life  sweet  under  its  influ 
ence.  The  world  is  not  yet  used  to  the  open  air  of 
this  thought  —  the  great  out  of  doors  of  it ;  we  are 
not  hardened  to  it.  We  have  been  so  long  housed 
in  our  comfortable  little  anthropomorphic  creeds, 
with  their  artificial  warmth  and  light,  that  when  we 
are  suddenly  turned  out  of  doors  by  this  thought, 
we  experience,  I  say,  the  cosmic  chill.  It  is  quite 
probable  that  future  generations,  with  a  more  robust 
religious  sense  than  ours,  will  have  quite  a  different 
feeling  in  the  presence  of  this  discovery. 

Behold,  what  a  chill,  or  series  of  chills,  the  reli 
gious  mind  has  all  along  felt  under  the  influence  of 
the  revelations  of  science,  medicine,  geology,  astro 
nomy  !  All  have  convulsed  the  religious  mind. 
Evolution  set  the  teeth  of  both  priests  and  laymen 
chattering,  and  many  of  them  are  chattering  still. 
Those  who  have  been  acclimated  to  the  thought  find 
new  inspiration  in  it ;  their  religious  sense  is  more 


120  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

vigorous  than  before.     It  is  like  new  blood  poured 
into  depleted  veins. 

It  is  beyond  dispute  that  of  the  two  rival  or  con 
flicting  conceptions  of  the  universe  now  pretty  famil 
iar  to  all  current  readers,  the  scientific  conception 
and  the  theological  conception,  the  one  is  waning,  or 
becoming  feebler  day  by  day,  the  other  growing 
stronger  day  by  day.  Up  to  the  sixteenth  or  seven 
teenth  century  the  theological  conception  held  almost 
complete  possession  of  man's  mind.  Only  here  and 
there  did  a  bold  thinker  like  Bruno  or  Roger  Bacon 
chafe  under  its  sway.  But  in  our  time  the  theologi 
cal  conception  has  been  so  modified  by  science  that 
it  is  hardly  recognizable  any  more.  In  the  simplest 
and  most  literal  form  this  conception  is  embodied  in 
the  Mosaic  account  of  creation.  The  universe  was 
created  out  of  nothing  by  God,  man  was  made  out 
of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  and  woman  out  of  man. 
Heaven  was  above  the  earth  and  Hades  below. 
The  world  was  the  centre  of  the  universe  and  the 
chief  object  in  it.  All  the  heavenly  bodies  revolved 
around  it,  the  sun  to  give  it  light  and  warmth  by 
day,  the  moon  to  give  light  by  night.  Then  came 
the  fall  of  Adam  through  the  machinations  of  the 
devil,  the  beginning  of  evil,  the  expulsion  from 
Paradise,  the  wrath  and  disappointment  of  God,  the 
wholesale  drowning,  Noah  and  his  ark,  the  chosen 
people,  the  new  departure,  the  birth  of  Jesus,  the 
plan  of  redemption,  and  the  rest  of  the  history 
which  we  know  so  well,  and  the  curious  arbitrary 
and  unnatural  and  fortuitous  character  of  it  all. 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY      121 

There  are  probably  very  few  theologians  or  reli 
gious  thinkers  of  any  sort  in  our  day  who  still  hold 
intact  this  original  theological  conception.  It  has 
been  modified  by  the  scientific  conception,  crowded 
back  and  lopped  oft'  here  and  there  till  but  few  of 
its  main  features  remain.  When  it  fully  possessed 
men's  minds,  as  during  the  long  stretch  of  the  theo 
logical  ages,  it  cropped  out  in  and  colored  every  de 
partment  of  life  and  thought.  Every  event,  every 
fact  of  history  and  experience,  and  every  phenome 
non  of  nature  was  seen  through  the  medium  of  this 
conception.  Out  of  it  grew  the  belief  in  magic, 
alchemy,  astrology,  witchcraft,  demoniacal  posses 
sions,  sorcery,  apparitions,  miracles,  charms,  exor 
cisms,  etc.  These  notions  fitted  perfectly  with  the 
theological  conception,  —  the  conception  of  a  world 
made  and  ruled  by  an  anthropomorphic  being.  The 
belief  in  a  devil  or  evil  spirit  upon  whom  to  saddle 
all  the  mischief  and  disease  and  disasters  became  a 
necessity.  How  could  a  benevolent  being  do  or  per 
mit  these  things  ?  A  devil  must  be  had,  even  if  we 
have  to  make  one.  Indeed,  as  soon  as  man  invented 
an  anthropomorphic  God  an  anthropomorphic  devil 
became  a  necessity.  Think  of  the  time  when  men 
really  believed  in  the  devil  —  when  they  did  not 
simply  believe  that  they  believed  in  him,  as  we  do 
nowadays,  but  when  they  believed  in  him  as  really 
as  they  believed  in  heat  and  cold,  night  and  day, 
life  and  death ;  when  doctors  and  theologians 
guarded  their  mouths  while  exorcising  an  evil  spirit 
lest  he  jump  down  their  throats.  If  a  man  inhaled 


122  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

a  little  fly  by  accident,  his  reason  might  be  unhinged 
by  terror  lest  he  had  swallowed  the  devil.  The 
King  of  Spain  used  to  sleep  between  the  monks  to 
keep  the  devil  off.  What  a  dreadful  hue  was  given 
to  life  by  this  belief ;  in  what  a  constant  state  of 
apprehension  and  alarm  men  lived  !  The  insane,  the 
epileptic  were  of  course  possessed  of  the  devil.  All 
evil,  storms,  pestilence,  disease,  everything  malodor 
ous,  was  the  work  of  evil  spirits. 

When  the  scientific  conception  began  to  awaken 
in  many  minds,  not  a  step  could  it  take,  or  cause  to 
be  taken,  without  a  collision  with  the  theological 
conception  or  its  brood  of  hateful  offspring.  Every 
domain  was  occupied.  Disease,  insanity,  epilepsy, 
pestilence,  storms,  comets,  fossils,  malformations, 
etc.,  all  had  their  theological  explanations.  The 
scientific  idea  found  itself  opposed  at  every  point. 
Hence  arose  the  warfare  of  science  with  theology, 
which  is  a  thrice-told  tale.  Lecky  has  written  it  in 
his  history  of  nationalism,  Draper  has  written  it, 
Andrew  White  has  written  it,  and  is  lately  adding 
his  "New  Chapters."  Not  one  foothold  has  science 
gained  without  a  struggle.  Not  one  province  has 
theology  given  up  till  it  was  compelled  to.  But 
step  by  step  it  has  been  forced  to  retreat,  till  at 
least  four  fifths  of  its  territory  is  now  occupied  by 
its  great  rival.  Magic  and  sorcery  and  alchemy  and 
astrology  are  given  up  as  idle  dreams  ;  witchcraft 
and  hobgoblins  and  even  the  good  devil  are  delu 
sions  of  our  fathers.  The  belief  in  miracles  is 
narrowed  down,  among  Protestants,  to  a  very  small 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY      123 

span  of  history,  namely,  the  New  Testament  mira 
cles,  and  even  these  will  probably  soon  be  given  up. 
The  medical  practitioner  no  longer  uses  charms  or 
amulets  or  fantastic  remedies  ;  he  is  no  longer  fight 
ing  against  evil  spirits  or  seeking  to  thwart  the  will 
of  God.  The  belief  in  the  devil  theory  of  insanity 
only  lingers  here  and  there  in  a  few  minds.  The 
president  of  one  of  our  colleges  lately  declared,  in 
print,  his  belief  in  the  theory.  Some  of  the  reli 
gious  journals  have  protested  against  the  late  experi 
ments  of  the  government  to  compel  rain,  showing  a 
remnant  of  the  old  theological  idea  that  rain  is  a 
special  providence.  Probably  the  same  type  of 
mind  is  shocked  at  the  audacity  of  the  lightning-rod 
man  ;  to  be  consistent  it  ought  to  discountenance 
the  umbrella  man  as  well,  since  to  shed  the  elec 
tric  fluid  by  aid  of  the  lightning  rod  seems  no  more 
irreligious  than  to  shed  the  aqueous  fluid  by  aid  of 
the  umbrella.  The  government  agents  found  men 
in  Virginia  who  had  religious  scruples  about  spraying 
their  grapes  against  the  black  rot,  and  many  good 
people  still  hold  to  special  providences  in  their  daily 
lives.  Prayer,  especially  for  material  good,  is  a 
survival  of  the  old  theological  concept.  But  for  all 
practical  purposes,  in  medicine,  in  geology,  in  astro 
nomy,  in  the  daily  ordering  of  our  lives,  and  in  the 
springs  of  our  natural  civilization,  the  theological 
conception  has  been  overthrown  and  the  scientific 
conception  has  taken  its  place.  We  no  longer 
tremble  at  an  eclipse  or  at  a  comet,  and  see  in  the 
northern  lights  the  gleam  of  the  fires  of  hell.  We 


124  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

have  learned  something  of  the  laws  of  storms  and 
the  causes  of  pestilence,  and  have  found  that  cleanli 
ness  is  a  better  safeguard  against  fever  than  fasting 
or  prayer. 

But  what  is  the  scientific  conception   of  the  uni 
verse  ?     The  idea  in  its  simplest  form  is   implied 
when  we  say  that  such  and  such  an  event  or  such 
and  such  a  course  of  conduct  is  according  to  nature, 
or    else  is  against   nature,  thereby   recognizing   the 
fact  that  there  is  an  inherent  order  or  sequence  in 
the  course  of  natural  events.     To  find  out  this  order 
and  formulate  it  is  the  object  of  science,  and  leads 
to  the  scientific    conception    of    the    universe.     To 
adjust  our  lives  to  it  and  avail  ourselves  of  it  is  the 
success  of  our  material  civilization.     In  this  concep 
tion    the    material    universe    is     self-existent,    self- 
governed,  without  beginning  and  without  end,  having 
no  limits  in  time  nor  bounds  in  space.      It  leads  us 
to  the  conviction  that  the  sum  of  physical  forces  is 
constant,  that  the  laws  of  causation  and  the  conser 
vation    of    energy    are    everywhere    operative,    but 
without    initiation  and  without  finality.      There  is 
the  same   difficulty  in   placing   limits  to   time  that 
there  are  in  placing  limits  to   space.      Both   are   un 
thinkable.     The    annihilation    of    matter    and    the 
creation  of  matter  ex  nihile  are  alike  unthinkable. 
The  man  of  science  finds  the  order  of  nature  rational, 
that  effects  are  always  linked  with  causes,  that  uni 
formity  is  never  broken,  that  nothing  is  interpolated 
but  follows  in  due  course,  in  short,  that  evolution  and 
not  special  creation  is  the  key  to  the  universe.     It 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY      125 

follows  that  man  is  of  animal  origin,  that  he  is  fitted 
to  his  environment  rather  than  it  to  him,  that  Nature 
befriends  and  furthers  him  when  he  obeys  her  laws, 
and  crushes  him  when  he  crosses  them.  Science 
knows  no  other  plan  of  redemption  than  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,  knows  no  other  day  of  creation  than 
this  day,  knows  no  other  fall  of  man  save  the  present 
daily  fall  of  ignorance  and  vice,  knows  no  heaven 
or  hell  save  that  we  make  for  ourselves,  knows  no 
immortality  save  the  persistence  of  life  and  force, 
and  finally  knows  no  God  save  the  Infinite  Power 
that  fills  and  upholds  all  things. 

Science  does  not  prove  that  miracles  or  the  super 
natural  is  impossible,  but  it  begets  in  the  mind  a 
conception  of  the  universe  which  finds  no  place  for 
these  things.  It  discloses  a  harmony  and  a  com 
pleteness  which  leaves  no  room  for  alien  and  extra 
neous  forces.  It  is  a  complete  solvent  of  the  old 
notions.  Theology  recognized  it  as  its  mortal  enemy 
at  once  and  has  fought  it  inch  by  inch.  Every 
generalization  of  science  has  been  so  much  territory 
wrested  from  theology.  What  a  blow  to  it  was  the 
Copernican  system  of  astronomy  !  How  Newton  cut 
under  it  with  his  law  of  gravitation,  how  Darwin 
with  his  theory  of  the  origin  of  species !  It  has 
been  shorn  of  its  influence  like  the  Pope  of  his  tem 
poral  power ;  it  is  confined  almost  entirely  to  the 
region  of  the  unverifiable,  and  here  it  is  safe.  It 
may  hurl  its  anathemas  at  the  man  of  science,  it  may 
grant  or  refuse  future  probation  to  the  heathen,  it 
may  consign  the  pagan  philosophers  to  purgatory,  it 


126  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

may  damn  infants  or  indorse  murderers,  it  may  call 
itself  Calvinism  or  Methodism  or  Catholicism  or 
Millerism,  and  the  time  spirit  will  look  on  content. 
Any  spiritual  influence  it  may  still  have  over  the 
masses,  any  power  to  brighten  and  elevate  men's 
lives,  science  can  thoroughly  appreciate.  But  even 
the  spiritual  power  of  our  theological  Pope  is  wan 
ing  fast.  His  anathemas  no  longer  inspire  terror, 
his  blessings  are  no  longer  worth  the  journey  to 
Rome  for.  In  its  chosen  realm  theology  is  little 
more  than  the  vestige  of  its  former  self. 

The  principle  of  the  unity  and  completeness  of 
nature,  or  this  perception  of  nature  as  an  entity,  a 
thing  in  and  of  itself,  is  comparatively  a  recent  evo 
lution.  Our  fathers  had  it  but  feebly,  our  remote 
theological  ancestors  not  at  all.  But  there  is  a  grow 
ing  conviction  in  the  human  mind  to-day  that  the 
forces  of  nature  are  constant  and  adequate  to  all  the 
phenomena  of  the  visible  world,  and  that  there  is 
no  room  and  never  has  been  any  room  for  the  intro 
duction  of  forces  extra-natural.  Akin  to  this,  and 
a  part  of  it,  is  the  feeling  that  any  system  of  religion 
to  be  credible  must  be  in  line  with  the  rest  of  our 
knowledge.  That  we  apprehend  moral,  philosophi 
cal,  artistic,  and  scientific  truth  with  our  normal 
faculties,  but  religious  truth  with  a  faculty  that  is 
a  special  gift  from  some  power  above  us  and  that  is 
not  in  any  way  related  to  the  former,  is  a  view  hos 
tile  to  the  scientific  synthesis.  Our  spiritual  know 
ledge  cannot  contradict  our  natural  knowledge. 
Faith  must  supplement,  not  forestall  reason.  If  the 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY      127 

law  of  evolution  is  not  continuous,  and  if  it  is  not 
adequate  to  cover  the  whole  field  of  human  develop 
ment,  religious  as  well  as  scientific,  then  we  must 
find  some  law  that  is. 

We  make  a  monstrosity  of  creation  when  we  make 
it  half  natural  and  half  supernatural.  If  religion  is 
something  that  has  only  an  accidental  relation  to  a 
man's  natural  capacity  for  goodness,  and  sin  some 
thing  which  has  only  an  accidental  relation  to  his 
natural  defects  and  shortcomings,  then  are  those 
things  contradictory  of  the  rest  of  our  knowledge. 
Why  the  man  of  science  has  difficulty  with  the  cur 
rent  faith  is  because  it  will  not  fit  in  with  the  scheme 
of  things  which  science  discloses.  It  is  an  anomaly, 
an  exception.  Go  into  any  of  the  popular,  churches 
and  listen  to  a  sermon  on  salvation  by  Jesus  Christ. 
What  you  hear  will  be  for  the  most  part  a  meaning 
less  jargon.  It  does  not  connect  itself  with  anything 
else  you  know  in  the  world.  You  shall  hear  some 
thing  about  blood  and  about  sacrifice  and  about 
atonement ;  that  is  just  as  much  outside  of  our 
knowledge  as  the  cabalism  of  the  Jews  or  the  reme 
dies  of  the  Indian  medicine  man.  If  the  preacher 
were  to  say  :  "  My  friends,  we  are  all  brothers  of 
this  man  Jesus  Christ,  flesh  of  his  flesh  and  bone  of 
his  bone ;  what  he  felt  we  may  feel ;  what  he  saw 
we  may  see ;  what  he  did  we  may  do  ;  we  have  in 
kind,  though  maybe  not  in  degree,  the  same  power 
and  capacities  he  had  ;  we  can  live  as  pure,  as  noble, 
as  disinterested  a  life  as  he  lived ;  we  may  show,  in 
a  measure,  the  same  meekness,  gentleness,  humility, 


128  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

unselfishness,  lovingness,  charity,  truthfulness,  bro- 
therliness  as  he  showed,  and  that  coming  to  him 
means  coining  to  our  better  selves,  to  the  Jesus 
within  us,  to  our  capacity  to  be  and  do  like  him," 
we  should  understand  him.  He  would  be  speaking 
words  of  soberness  and  truth.  If  he  were  to  say 
that  salvation  by  Jesus  Christ  meant  salvation  by 
cultivating  Christ-like  qualities,  not  the  believing 
tli is  or  that  about  Christ,  but  by  living  up  to  the 
Christ-like  ideal,  —  if  he  were  to  say  these  or  the 
like  things,  his  words  would  be  strong  by  the  whole 
weight  of  science  and  of  human  experience.  What 
lie  does  say  or  do  is  to  unfold  the  plan  of  salvation, 
that  curious  device  by  which  the  first  person  of  the 
Trinity  cheated  the  devil  of  his  due,  and  in  which 
such  cabalistic  terms  as  the  council  of  the  God-head, 
the  fall  of  man,  imputed  guilt,  vicarious  atonement, 
etc.,  play  the  leading  parts. 

My  orthodox  brother  will  charge  that  I  speak  as 
a  natural  man  to  whom  these  things  are  foolishness. 
Well,  the  natural  man  has  come  a  good  way  to  the 
front  these  latter  days.  He  will  not  be  sat  down 
on  with  impunity  any  longer.  He  is  backed  up  as 
he  has  never  been  before.  Time  was  when  he  was 
utterly  squelched  and  disposed  of  by  simply  telling 
him  that  he  was  the  natural  man,  one  with  natural 
forces,  with  the  carnal,  unregenerate,  devil-beridden 
natural  world,  and  that  all  good  things  were  on  the 
side  of  the  extra-natural  or  theological  man.  He 
was  a  poor,  lost,  and  ruined  creature  —  an  outcast  in 
the  universe.  But  how  are  the  tables  turned.  It 


THE   DECADENCE   OF  THEOLOGY  129 

is  your  theological  man,  your  man  of  miracles  and 
special  providences,  of  witches  and  demons,  of  rid 
dles  and  revelations,  who  is  on  the  defensive  now. 
He  is  stripped  almost  naked  ;  he  has  barely  a  foot 
of  ground  to  stand  upon.  The  natural  man.  the  man 
of  reason,  has  the  whole  of  science,  the  enormous 
sum  of  human  knowledge,  the  whole  visible  order 
of  the  universe  on  his  side.  Our  civilization  is  his, 
the  future  is  his,  the  stars  in  their  courses  fight  for 
him.  We  have  learned,  if  we  have  learned  anything, 
that  spirit  loves  matter,  that  it  blooms  out  of  it,  and 
that  it  is  from  within  and  not  from  without  that  sal 
vation  comes  ;  that  the  race  of  man  has  many  saviours 
and  must  have  many  more.  The  enigmas  of  the 
old  theology  are  exploded  ;  religion  takes  its  place 
in  line  with  other  normal  forces,  unfolding  out  of 
man  as  surely  as  his  poetry  or  his  art.  .  It  is  natural 
or  it  is  nothing.  No  matter  how  truly  supernatural 
the  devotee  may  think  his  religion,  his  very  delu 
sion  is  natural.  Those  poor  wretches  who  confessed 
themselves  witches  during  the  witch-ridden  age  were 
the  victims  of  a  natural  delusion. 

In  all  religious  matters,  in  fact  in  all  subjective 
matters,  we  are  fast  coming  to  see  that  truth  is 
not  a  fixed  quantity  that  may  be  seized  upon  and 
monopolized  by  any  sect  or  church.  We  are  begin 
ning  to  see  even  further  than  that.  WTe  are  begin 
ning  to  see  that  there  are  no  distinctively  religious 
truths  ;  that  all  truth  is  one ;  that  the  faculties 
that  distinguish  truth  from  falsehood  in  any  sphere 
are  always  one  and  the  same.  Religion  is  a  senti- 


130  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

ment,  and  is  true  as  a  sentiment ;  it  is  real,  but 
the  objects  of  faith  may  be  real  and  they  may  not. 
They  are  not  truths  unless  they  are  verifiable. 
The  world  within  we  re-create  daily.  The  outer 
world  is  always  the  same.  It  is  only  our  ability  to 
deal  with  it  that  fluctuates.  Hence  the  facts  of  sci 
ence,  so  far  as  they  are  facts,  are  constant,  while 
systems  of  ethics,  religions,  philosophies,  theories  of 
tins  or  that,  are  in  endless  mutation.  Pilate's  ques 
tion,  What  is  truth  ?  was  not  the  question  of  a 
scoffer.  What,  indeed,  is  the  truth  about  the  melt 
ing  and  changing  forms  and  figures  we  see  in  the 
cloud-land  of  man's  moral  and  religious  experience  ? 
Are  we  not  beginning  slowly  to  see  that  there  are  not, 
nor  can  be,  any  final  truths  in  these  matters,  in  the 
sense  in  which  there  are  final  truths  in  science  ? 

Where  religion  imitates  science  and  formulates  a 
creed  in  which  it  seeks  to  give  permanent  intellec 
tual  form  to  its  so-called  truths,  it  takes  a  false  step. 
The  creed,  as  we  see,  soon  pinches  and  must  be  made 
over  new.  When  man  draws  hard  and  fast  lines  in 
religious  matters,  he  soon  finds  himself  compelled 
to  pull  down  and  build  larger.  The  conception  of 
God  is  being  completely  made  over  in  the  religious 
conscience  of  our  time.  As  man  becomes  more  bene 
volent  and  merciful  he  makes  himself  a  more  bene 
volent  and  merciful  God.  The  God  of  our  Puritan 
fathers  will  not  do  for  us  at  all.  The  moral  diffi 
culties  of  Calvinism  are  getting  to  be  as  insurmount 
able  as  the  intellectual  difficulties  of  Catholicism. 
The  God  of  to-day,  or  the  divine  ideal  towards  which 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  THEOLOGY      131 

the  religious  conscience  of  our  time  is  struggling, 
one  may  feel  some  liking  for,  but  the  God  of  the 
Puritans,  of  Calvinism,  was  a  monster  too  terrible  to 
contemplate. 

We  shall  soon  enlarge  the  conception  of  religion 
till  we  shall  not  use  the  term  at  all  in  a  special  or 
restricted  sense.  We  shall  see  that  all  lovers  of 
truth  are  lovers  of  God.  When  one  pauses  to  look 
at  it,  what  utter  selfishness  or  selfism  lies  at  the  bot 
tom  of  the  old  creeds  —  the  one  thought  of  a  man 
to  secure  his  personal  safety  from  some  impending 
danger.  The  soldier  who  is  determined  to  come  out 
of  the  battle  with  a  whole  skin  is  not  the  ideal  soldier. 
The  man  of  science,  the  truth  lover,  how  much  more 
worthy  his  self-forgetfulness,  his  renunciation,  which 
has  in  view  no  personal  end  whatever.  The  new 
birth  of  science,  —  the  dropping  of  all  worldly  and 
secondary  ends,  the  absolute  devotion  to  the  truth 
for  its  own  sake,  —  is  there  anything  more  truly  re 
ligious  than  this  ?  Darwin  cared  nothing  for  reli 
gion,  so  called,  because  his  mind  and  his  conscience 
were  enlisted  in  his  science.  He  was  serving  God 
disinterestedly.  Science  to  him  was  religion. 

"  Esaias  is  very  bold  and  saith,  I  was  found  of 
them  that  sought  me  not;  I  was  made  manifest  to 
them  that  asked  not  after  me." 

"  He  judged  the  cause  of  the  poor  and  the  needy  j 
was  not  this  to  know  me  ?  saith  the  Lord.'7 


IX 

REASON   AND   PREDISPOSITION 

most  men  in  the  formation  of  their  opin- 
ions  are  governed  more  by  predisposition  or 
unconscious  bent  and  tendency  than  by  reason  is 
obvious  enough.  Indeed,  reason  is  the  faculty  by 
which  we  seek  to  justify  the  course  of  this  deeper 
seated  predetermining  force  or  bent.  We  gravitate 
naturally  to  this  opinion  or  to  that,  to  conservatism 
or  to  radicalism,  to  realism  or  to  idealism,  and  we 
seek  for  reasons  that  favor  our  course.  Considera 
tions  that  are  of  great  force  with  certain  types  of 
mind  are  of  little  or  no  force  with  certain  other 
types.  Reasons  that  confirm  what  we  already  be 
lieve  or  want  to  believe,  ho\v  forcible  they  are ! 
But  if  they  point  the  other  way,  how  lightly  we  es 
teem  them  !  Reason  is  like  the  compass  which  the 
sailor  takes  to  sea  with  him  and  to  which  he  con 
stantly  refers  in  keeping  his  course,  but  which  has 
nothing  to  do  in  determining  that  course.  Every 
man  goes  his  own  way,  and  of  the  agents  that  deter 
mine  him  in  any  given  direction,  whether  original 
bent,  inherited  traits,  the  influence  of  his  training 
or  of  his  environment,  he  is  but  dimly  conscious ; 
his  reason  is  the  conscious  instrument  by  which  he 
tries  to  steer  on  his  predetermined  way. 


REASON   AND   PREDISPOSITION  133 

Hence  it  is  that  Cardinal  Newman  says  that  in 
his  going  over  to  Rome  it  was  not  logic  that  carried 
him  on ;  "  as  well  might  one  say  that  the  quicksil 
ver  in  the  barometer  changes  the  weather.  It  is 
the  concrete  being  that  reasons ;  pass  a  number  of 
years  and  I  find  my  mind  in  a  new  place  ;  how  ? 
The  whole  man  moves ;  paper  logic  is  but  the 
record  of  it."  The  great  cardinal  may  have  been 
logical  after  he  once  started  for  Rome,  but  what 
made  him  drift  that  way  ?  It  was  because  he  was 
a  born  papist  from  the  first ;  one  can  see  the  stamp 
of  Rome  upon  him  in  his  youth. 

Probably  most  of  us  come  into  possession  of  our 
religious  beliefs  in  the  same  way  Newman  did,  — 
we  grow  into  them ;  they  are  slowly  and  uncon 
sciously  built  up  in  our  minds.  We  think  we  rea 
son  ourselves  into  them,  but  we  find  ourselves  in 
possession  of  them,  and  then  we  seek  to  justify 
our  course  by  an  appeal  to  reason.  In  our  day  re 
ligious  opinion  or  religious  feeling  sets  less  and  less 
store  by  dogmas  and  creeds ;  it  no  longer  goes  in  the 
leading-strings  of  set  forms  and  outward  authority. 
Natural  knowledge  is  in  the  ascendant.  The  sun  of 
science  has  actually  risen,  indeed  rides  high  up  in  the 
heavens,  and  the  things  proper  to  the  twilight  or  half 
knowledge  of  a  few  centuries  ago  flee  away,  or  are 
seen  to  be  shadows  and  illusions.  The  great  mother 
church  may  draw  her  curtains  and  re-trim  her 
lamps  and  make  believe  it  is  still  night  in  the  world, 
but  those  outside  know  better,  and  those  inside  are 
bound  to  find  it  out  by  and  by.  Newman  is  a  care- 


134  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

ful  reasoner,  but  what  would  satisfy  his  mind  will 
not  satisfy  all,  because  we  are  not  all  going  his  way. 
\Vhat  is  a  fair  breeze  to  one  may  be  a  foul  breeze  to 
another. 

Newman's  reason  follows  his  belief,  never  leads 
it.  Any  number  of  difficulties,  intellectual  diffi 
culties,  he  says,  do  not  make  a  doubt.  Certainly 
not  where  experience  attests  the  thing  to  be  true. 
But  suppose  it  is  contrary  to  all  experience,  contrary 
to  all  the  principles  upon  which  human  observation 
is  founded,  —  how  then  ? 

Of  course  we  are  not  always  to  reject  a  proposi 
tion  simply  because  we  cannot  understand  it  or  pen 
etrate  it  with  the  light  of  reason.  We  do  not  know 
how  or  why  species  vary,  but  we  know  they  do  vary. 
We  do  not  understand  the  laws  of  heredity,  but  we 
know  heredity  to  be  a  fact,  and  so  with  thousands 
of  other  things.  Do  we  know  transubstantiation  to 
be  a  fact  ?  There  are  difficulties  in  the  way  of  evo 
lution,  but  these  difficulties  are  not  such  as  violate 
nature,  but  such  as  indicate  that  nature  may  have 
taken  another  course  in  the  production  of  species. 
The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  believing  in  the  effi 
cacy  of  holy  water,  or  that  the  image  of  the  Madonna 
winked,  or  that  Elisha  made  iron  swim,  are  of  quite 
another  sort ;  these  assumptions  contravene  all  the 
rest  of  our  knowledge. 

At  the  best,  we  all  see  the  truth  through  a  glass, 
darkly,  never  face  to  face.  We  cannot  separate  our 
selves  from  our  times  or  our  country.  We  see 
things  through  the  medium  of  race,  of  family,  of 


REASON  AND   PREDISPOSITION  135 

public  opinion,  of  culture,  of  books.  The  French 
man  sees  through  one  medium,  the  German  through 
another,  the  Englishman  through  another,  the  Amer 
ican  another.  The  Northern  races  see  things  differ 
ently  from  the  Southern  races,  the  Celt  from  the 
Saxon,  women  from  men,  youth  from  age.  The 
impressionable,  imaginative  man  cannot  be  expected 
to  give  the  same  report  of  what  he  sees  as  the 
heavy,  phlegmatic  man.  We  believe  according  to 
our  capacity  for  belief.  Scientific  considerations 
have  no  weight  with  some  minds  ;  theological  con 
siderations  have  little  weight  with  others.  I  tried 
a  long  time  the  other  day  to  convince  a  man  that  the 
earth  was  round  and  turned  round.  But  I  could 
not.  He  knew  better.  Equally  in  vain  did  I  once 
try  to  convince  a  farmer  that  the  pump  did  not  suck 
or  draw  the  water,  as  he  supposed,  but  that  the 
weight  of  the  outside  air  did  it  all.  In  higher 
and  in  less  demonstrable  matters  it  is  usually 
equally  futile  to  try  to  change  people's  opinions  or 
convictions,  at  least  by  a  direct  attack  upon  them. 
Appeal  to  a  man's  reason,  or  to  his  argumentative 
faculties,  and  you  have  started  a  game  at  which  two 
can  play.  The  indirect  method  is  better  ;  aim  to 
beget  in  him  a  state  of  mind,  or  a  way  of  look 
ing  at  things,  that  is  incompatible  with  the  belief 
you  seek  to  remove.  This  is  undermining  his 
opinion. 

Outside  of  mathematics  and  the  exact  sciences, 
what  we  call  reason  is  a  very  uncertain  matter.  In 
the  region  of  exact  demonstration  all  minds  capable 


136  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

of  a  logical  process  must  reach  nearly  the  same  con 
clusions  ;  but  in  the  region  of  man's  moral,  intellec 
tual,  and  emotional  nature,  —  in  politics,  in  religion, 
in  metaphysics,  in  taste,  etc.,  —  the  field  is  so  vast  and 
complicated,  there  is  room  for  so  many  disturbing 
elements  to  come  in,  such  as  temperament,  training, 
personal  bias,  family,  race,  imagination,  sentiment, 
the  time  spirit,  etc.,  that  the  results  of  reason  are  as 
various  as  the  complexions  of  men.  What  is  a  con 
vincing  reason  to  one  man  is  no  reason  at  all  to  an 
other.  Men  draw  precisely  opposite  conclusions  from 
the  same  premises.  I  suppose  every  soul  builds  for 
itself,  or  has  built  for  it,  a  house  of  reason  in  which 
to  dwell.  With  some  it  is  a  very  frail  structure, 
and  will  not  bear  any  pressure  at  all ;  with  others 
it  is  much  more  massive  and  strong ;  but  with  none 
is  it  invulnerable.  Some  use  the  material  which 
others  reject ;  but  the  great  mass  of  us,  I  suppose, 
take  the  houses  we  find  already  built ;  we  are  not 
capable  of  building  even  the  rudest  structure  for 
ourselves.  But  reasons  of  some  sort  to  put  round 
about  us  and  house  us  from  the  great  inhospitable 
out  of  doors  we  must  have.  Most  men  can  give 
plenty  of  reasons  for  their  religious  and  political 
beliefs.  You  and  I  may  not  accept  them,  but  that 
does  not  invalidate  them  to  these  particular  per 
sons.  They  afford  the  shelter  the  mind  craves,  and 
that  is  enough.  Of  course  there  is  no  final  rea 
son  in  these  fields,  no  one  inevitable  conclusion,  as 
in  mathematics.  The  clearest  and  strongest  mind 
brings  the  clearest  and  strongest  reason.  In  the 


REASON   AND   PREDISPOSITION  137 

purely  human  sphere  all  things  are  relative.  The 
little  and  the  big,  the  high  and  the  low,  the  hot  and 
the  cold,  pleasure  and  pain,  good  and  bad,  right  and 
wrong,  true  and  false,  are  relative  terms ;  and  the 
best  reason  is  that  which  covers  the  most  facts,  which 
is  the  most  complete  induction.  We  dispute  with 
each  other  about  the  wisdom  or  expediency  of  a  po 
litical  measure,  but  the  absolute  reason  has  nothing 
to  say  upon  either  side ;  the  truth  or  falsity  of  the 
matter  is  relative. 

We  come  by  our  opinions  and  beliefs  upon  most 
subjects  by  a  slow  and  obscure  process.  We  think 
we  are  guided  to  them  by  the  light  of  reason,  but  as 
a  rule  we  are  not.  There  is  some  determining  force 
that  goes  before  reason.  This  determining  force  is 
our  idiosyncrasy,  natural  bent,  or  predisposition,  the 
pattern  to  which  our  souls  are  cut,  and  over  which 
MTe  have  as  little  control  as  over  our  statures  or  tem 
peraments.  We  are  born  Calviriists  or  Methodists 
or  Catholics,  or  Whigs  or  Tories.  The  mind  has  its 
natural  affinities  and  repulsions.  Its  door  opens  as 
by  a  secret  spring  at  the  knock  of  certain  truths, 
and  is  fast  bolted  against  others  to  which  the  next 
mind  again  opens.  We  read  arguments  in  favor  of 
certain  views  to  which  we  are  opposed,  and  they  have 
no  weight  with  us  ;  our  minds  do  not  open  to  them, 
or,  if  they  enter  for  a  moment,  they  are  quickly 
hustled  out  by  other  considerations  which  have  the 
precedence  there.  We  are  housed  in  our  opinions, 
and  we  resist  being  turned  out  of  doors  and  having 
another  and  a  different  roof  built  over  our  heads. 


138  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

I  recently  read  the  confessions  of  a  Catholic  about 
his  religion.  He  said  he  could  not  accept  the  Bible 
upon  its  own  evidence  ;  he  must  have  some  exterior 
authority  to  authenticate  it  to  him.  This  he  found 
in  his  church.  His  reason  revolted  at  the  idea  of 
an  infallible  book,  but  not  at  the  idea  of  an  infalli 
ble  Pope.  He  could  accept  one  upon  its  own  evi 
dence,  but  not  the  other.  Was  not  this  man  a  born 
Catholic  ? 

"  Few  minds  in  earnest,"  says  Cardinal  Newman, 
"  can  remain  at  ease  without  some  sort  of  rational 
grounds  for  their  religious  belief ;  "  but  see  what 
kind  of  "  grounds  "  he  plants  his  house  of  faith 
upon.  Most  of  us  would  consider  them  treacher 
ous  and  shifting  sands.  Read  how  he  argues  him 
self  into  accepting  the  dogma  of  transubstantiation. 
"  Why  should  it  not  be  ?  What 's  to  hinder  it  ? 
What  do  I  know  of  substance  and  matter  ?  Just  as 
much  as  the  greatest  philosopher,  and  that  is  nothing 
at  all."  Certain  types  of  mind  will  find  this  reason 
ing  sufficient.  If  we  are  already  convinced,  how 
little  it  takes  to  convince  us !  To  certain  other 
types  of  mind  it  is  very  much  like  reasoning 
whether  or  not  Santa  Claus  comes  down  the  chim 
ney.  WThat  's  to  hinder  ?  The  chimney  is  open 
at  the  top,  and  has  a  definite  capacity  of  good, 
honest  cubic  inches.  How  do  I  know  who  or  what 
comes  down  the  chimney,  with  its  open  shaft  up 
there  in  the  mysterious  darkness  ?  Newman  ac 
cepts  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  on 
scarcely  more  tangible  grounds  ;  namely,  "  because  it 


REASON  AND   PREDISPOSITION  139 

so  intimately  harmonizes  with  that  circle  of  recog 
nized  dogmatic  truths  into  which  it  has  been  recently 
received."  To  some  minds  it  would  occur  to  ask, 
Does  it  harmonize  with  the  circle  of  known  facts 
governing  human  propagation  ?  In  reasoning  him 
self  into  a  belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope, 
Newman  makes  a  long  run  before  he  jumps ;  he 
begins  with  a  series  of  startling  assumptions.  Sup 
pose  this  to  be  true,  and  that  to  be  true,  and  still 
another  thing  to  be  true,  arid  then  the  leap,  and  the 
chasm  is  cleared.  But  Newman  was  a  born  Roman 
ist.  He  says,  "  From  the  age  of  fifteen  dogma  has 
been  the  fundamental  principle  of  my  religion ; " 
"  religion  as  a  mere  sentiment  is  to  me  a  dream  and 
a  mockery."  Religion  as  a  dogma  has  drenched  the 
world  in  blood ;  as  a  sentiment  it  has  refined  and 
elevated  the  race.  As  a  dogma  it  says,  "  Believe  as 
I  do,  or  I  will  kill  you ;  "  as  a  sentiment  it  says, 
"Except  ye  become  as  little  children." 

Reason  never  led  man  to  a  religion.  Religion 
does  not  exist  for  his  reason,  but  for  his  emotional 
nature,  his  fears,  his  hopes,  his  spiritual  aspirations, 
and  as  an  escape  from  the  disappointments  and  the 
materialism  of  life.  Probably  no  religion  that  has 
yet  existed  can  stand  the  test  of  reason  —  religion, 
I  mean,  not  as  a  system  of  ethics,  but  as  a  system  of 
dogma.  The  question  for  an  outsider  to  ask  con 
cerning  the  religion  of  a  race  or  people  is  not,  Is 
it  true  ?  but,  Is  it  elevating  ?  Is  it  saving  ?  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  various  lines  of  reasoning  that  have 
been  resorted  to  to  prove  the  truth  of  Christianity 


140  THE    LIGHT   OF   DAY 

have  only  weakened  its  hold  upon  faith.  When 
men  believe  without  reason,  or  in  defiance  of  it,  then 
is  religion  strong  and  has  a  career.  I  can  well 
understand  what  Cardinal  Newman  meant  when  he 
said,  "  I  do  not  shrink  from  uttering  my  firm  con 
viction  that  it  would  be  a  gain  to  the  country  were 
it  vastly  more  superstitious,  more  bigoted,  more 
gloomy,  more  fierce  in  its  religion  than  at  present 
it  shows  itself  to  be."  Is  not  that  the  Catholic 
note,  though  Newman  when  he  uttered  it  was  not 
yet  a  Catholic  ?  But  it  was  the  spirit  of  dogmatic 
religion  that  spoke  there,  the  fierce  cry  of  the  spirit 
of  the  earlier  centuries  when  the  church  moulded  the 
world  in  its  own  image,  and  fire  and  fagots  awaited 
the  man  who  said  to  it,  "  Come,  let  us  reason  to 
gether."  In  saying  that  no  religion  can  stand  the 
test  of  reason,  I  mean,  of  course,  the  reason  of  the 
disbeliever,  the  reason  of  the  man  who  sees  the  facts 
from  the  outside  instead  of  from  within,  or  objec 
tively  instead  of  subjectively.  When  we  once  be 
lieve  a  thing,  how  many  reasons  we  can  find  in  sup 
port  of  our  course !  I  was  lately  much  interested 
in  reading  the  sparring  match  of  reason  in  the  "  Nine 
teenth  Century  "  between  Sir  James  Stephen  and 
St.  George  Mivart,  both  clear,  logical,  trained,  and 
honest  minds,  and  both  assuming  to  be  guided  solely 
by  the  light  of  reason.  Mr.  Mivart  is  a  Roman 
Catholic,  and  Mr.  Justice  Stephen  is  free  from  all 
church  ties,  and  as  a  matter  of  course  their  conclu 
sions  differ  as  widely  as  day  from  night.  What 
penetrates  and  convinces  one  mind  glances  off  the 


REASON   AND    PREDISPOSITION  141 

surface  of  the  other  with  hardly  an  impression.  One 
soon  sees  that  the  difference  between  them  is  not  so 
much  in  their  reasoning  powers  as  in  their  attitude  of 
mind,  their  mental  bias,  their  point  of  view,  their 
susceptibility  to  certain  considerations.  A  process 
which  antedates  reason  has  shaped  the  mind  of  each 
to  a  particular  pattern,  and  the  lines  of  their  belief 
can  never  coincide.  St.  George  Mivart  begins  one 
of  his  sentences  thus  :  "  My  belief  in  a  future  life 
convinces  me  that  conscious  intelligences  may  exist 
without  bodies,"  etc.  There  he  lets  out  the  whole 
secret ;  it  is  his  "  belief  "  that  "  convinces  "  him, 
just  as  it  convinces  all  of  us.  He  already  believes, 
therefore  he  is  convinced.  If  he  could  give  us 
every  step  of  the  process  through  which  his  belief 
arose,  that  would  be  interesting.  But  he  cannot,  or 
does  not.  He  starts  with  the  belief,  and  probably 
the  road  by  which  he  came  to  it  is  deep  down  be 
yond  the  reach  of  his  consciousness.  He  says  his 
conviction  of  the  truth  of  revealed  religion  and  of  the 
authority  of  the  church  as  its  divine  guardian  and 
exponent  is  not  due  to  "  emotional  feelings  and 
sentiments,  and  still  less  to  any  declarations  of 
authority,"  but  to  the  "  evident  dictates  of  calm  and 
solid  reason."  Yet  these  reasons  he  cannot  set  forth 
so  as  to  satisfy  Sir  James  or  any  other  impartial 
reader.  It  is  evidently  his  belief  in  them  that  con 
vinces  him  of  their  truth. 

The  Catholic  note  which  Mr.  Mivart  sounds  is 
unmistakable,  and  is  frequently  met  with  in  the  cur 
rent  British  reviews.  Here  it  is  in  an  essay  by 


142  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

Aubrey  de  Vere  :  "  Reason  knows  her  own  limits. 
When  the  subject  matter  lies  wholly  within  those 
limits,  as  in  science,  truth  is  proved  by  reason  ;  in 
matters  capable  of  man's  apprehension  in  part,  and 
yet  partially  beyond  those  limits,  it  is  proved  to 
reason.  In  the  former  case  Reason  asserts ;  in  the 
latter  case  she  confesses."  How  plausible  this  is, 
and  how  cleverly  it  prepares  the  way  for  the  author 
ity  of  the  Catholic  church  !  It  is  saying,  in  effect, 
that  there  are  certain  reasonable  things  which  yet 
lie  outside  of  the  limits  of  reason,  and  which  reason 
is  to  accept  without  proof.  Are  there  any  limits  to 
reason  in  the  sense  here  implied  ?  I  think  not. 
All  reasonable  things  are  to  be  apprehended  by  the 
reason  alone.  Nothing  can  be  proved  to  reason  but 
by  reason.  To  say  that  a  reasonable  proposition  is 
first  apprehended  by  some  faculty  besides  reason  and 
then  brought  home  to  the  latter,  is  like  saying  that 
a  visible  object  can  be  seen  by  something  other  than 
the  eye.  Microscopes  and  telescopes  aid  the  eye 
by  multiplying  and  extending  its  powers  in  its  own 
direction ;  not  by  the  addition  of  any  new  principle 
of  vision.  In  the  same  way  the  discovery  of  the 
law  of  gravitation  or  the  laws  of  Kepler  arms  and 
extends  the  human  reason,  of  which  they  are  the 
fruit.  Power  alone  can  use  power,  the  eye  alone 
can  use  the  telescope,  not  the  hand  or  the  ear. 
There  are  realities  of  the  material  world  which  the 
eye  does  not  acquaint  us  with,  as  sound  and  odor, 
for  instance,  but  in  its  own  sphere  the  eye  is  not 
barred,  and  in  its  own  sphere  the  reason  is  not 


REASON   AND   PREDISPOSITION  143 

limited.  True,  there  are  many  things  which  it  can 
not  penetrate  —  this  nearest  of  all  facts,  for  instance, 
how  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  ;  neither 
can  any  other  faculty  penetrate  the  mystery.  It  is 
not  reason  that  sees  the  truth  of  poetry  or  art ;  the 
most  reasonable  man  in  the  world  may  fail  to  see 
the  poetic  or  artistic  truth  of  Homer  or  Angelo. 
Neither  is  it  reason  that  sees  the  truth  of  religion, 
using  the  word  in  its  largest  sense,  as  dissociated 
from  all  creeds  ;  no,  it  is  the  soul,  the  higher  intel 
ligence,  that  sees  the  truth  or  the  worth  of  these 
things.  But  it  is  the  reason  that  sees  the  truth  or 
falsity  of  the  dogmas  of  the  church,  the  science  of 
it,  its  theology.  These  are  propositions  addressed 
to  the  understanding  and  not  to  the  soul.  It  is 
reason  that  grasps  the  philosophy  of  literature  and 
art,  but  literature  and  art  themselves  address  quite 
a  different  part  of  our  nature.  In  its  own  spheres 
we  must  give  reason  its  way.  In  the  objective 
world  of  fact  and  experience  we  have  no  guide  but 
reason.  How  far  reason  can  deal  with  the  inner 
subjective  world  is  another  matter.  "  The  king 
dom  of  heaven  cometh  not  with  observation,"  nor 
with  reasoning.  Logic  may  deepen  a  man's  reli 
gious  convictions,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  it  can  ever 
bring  it  about  in  the  first  place.  Something  more 
personal  and  emotional  is  necessary.  I  should  say 
that  it  was  not  even  necessary  that  a  religion  be 
true  to  the  reason  to  save  men,  at  least  in  this 
world ;  it  is  necessary  that  it  be  true  to  the  moral 
isense  —  that  is,  that  it  be  worthy,  that  it  cherish 


144  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

a  higher  ideal.  Calvinism  has  long  outraged  men's 
reason,  but  it  got  along  very  well  till  it  began  to 
impinge  upon  their  moral  sense,  their  sense  of  jus 
tice,  of  mercy,  of  fitness.  Reason  can  be  silenced, 
but  "  infant  damnation "  arouses  something  that 
will  not,  at  this  age  of  the  world,  be  silenced. 
The  ideal  of  Calvinism  is  beginning  to  topple,  and 
when  this  is  the  case  with  a  creed  its  power  for 
good  is  gone. 

This,  then,  seems  to  be  the  truth  with  regard  to 
reason  :  — 

It  is  the  lamp  by  which  our  feet  are  guided,  but 
in  no  sense  the  power  that  determines  the  course 
we  are  seeking.  Just  as  we  use  a  lamp  to  help  find 
our  way,  or  to  disclose  to  us  some  object  for  which 
we  are  searching,  so  we  use  reason  to  light  up  our 
course  and  to  help  us  to  ends  of  the  desirableness 
of  which  we  were  already  convinced. 


RELIGIOUS   TRUTH 

"TTTHEN  hard  pressed,  theological  writers  often 
*  *  take  refuge  in  the  statement  that  there  is 
some  kind  of  evidence  that  is  superior  to  scientific 
evidence  in  matters  that  pertain  to  objects  of  sense 
and  experience.  Thus  Dr.  Temple,  in  his  Bampton 
Lectures  on  the  "  Relations  between  Religion  and 
Science,"  says  in  behalf  of  miracles,  that  if  the  stu 
dent  of  science  is  to  admit  a  breach  in  the  uniform 
ity  of  nature,  "  it  can  only  be  by  stepping  outside  of 
his  science  for  the  time  and  conceiving  the  possibil 
ity  that  there  is  some  other  truth  beside  scientific 
truth,  and  some  other  kind  of  evidence  beside  scien 
tific  evidence."  Unless  he  does  this  he  is  in  a 
groove,  and  is  like  "  the  student  who  when  he  first 
saw  a  locomotive  engine  looked  perseveringly  for  the 
horses  that  impelled  it,  because  he  had  never  known, 
and  consequently  could  not  imagine,  any  other  mode 
of  producing  such  motion."  But  if  the  student  did 
persevere  he  surely  found  the  horses  at  last,  a  real 
tangible  force  that  propelled  the  engine,  and  one 
that  worked  according  to  uniform  law.  For  my  part 
I  confess  I  cannot  conceive  of  any  evidence  that  can 
be  brought  in  support  of  miracles  that  shall  not  be  in 
its  nature  scientific,  that  is,  addressed  to  our  rational 


146  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

faculties.  What  is  this  other  evidence  to  which  Dr. 
Temple  alludes  ?  He  would  probably  say  it  is  the 
evidence  that  a  higher  will  interferes  and  sets  aside 
or  reverses  the  ordinary  processes  of  nature ;  but  do 
we  not  want  evidence  that  a  higher  will  does  so  in 
terfere,  and  must  not  this  evidence  be  scientific  ? 
that  is,  adequate  to  convince  the  mind  ?  We  can 
admit  a  breach  in  the  uniformity  of  nature  only  upon 
the  same  kind  of  evidence  as  that  which  leads  us  to 
deny  the  breach  ;  that  is,  evidence  that  appeals  to 
reason  and  experience.  It  must  be  tangible,  objective 
evidence,  and  not  a  theory  or  a  groundless  postulate. 
What  proves  the  interference  of  this  higher  will  ? 
The  miracle.  But  what  proves  the  miracle  ?  The 
theory  of  the  higher  will. 

If  there  are  other  truths  than  scientific  truths,  and 
other  grounds  of  certitude  than  those  apprehended 
by  the  reason,  they  are  not  such  as  are  available 
when  natural  law  is  on  trial. 

If  we  ask  of  a  thing,  or  a  measure,  or  a  course  of 
conduct,  Is  it  good  or  bad,  right  or  wrong  ?  we  ap 
peal  to  the  moral  sense  ;  if  we  ask  of  a  thing,  Is  it 
beautiful  ?  we  appeal  to  the  aesthetic  sense.  If  we 
ask  of  a  statement  or  alleged  occurrence,  Is  it  true  ? 
we  appeal  to  the  intellectual  sense,  to  the  reason 
and  judgment.  And  there  is  no  other  court  but 
this  that  can  settle  the  truth  or  falsity  of  a  propo 
sition.  There  is  no  other  court  but  this  that  has 
to  do  with  the  truth  of  things. 

Our  religious  instincts  and  impulses  do  not  have 
to  do  with  the  truth  or  falsity  of  a  thing  ;  they  are 


RELIGIOUS    TRUTH  147 

just  as  keen  and  active  in  the  presence  of  false  gods 
as  in  the  presence  of  true  ;  our  aesthetic  perceptions 
or  attractions  do  not  have  to  do  with  the  truth  or 
falsity  of  things,  but  only  with  their  beauty.  A 
fable  pleases  more  than  a  history.  The  conscience 
is  no  guide  in  detecting  truth  from  falsehood,  but  in 
detecting  right  from  wrong  —  in  separating  what  is 
good  from  what  is  bad,  and  it  may  be  trained  or 
warped  so  as  to  mistake  one  for  the  other.  What 
the  conscience  of  one  man  approves  that  of  another 
may  disapprove.  It  is  our  reason  and  knowing 
faculties  alone  that  have  to  do  with  the  truth  of 
things,  and  the  verdict  of  these  faculties  can  never 
change  or  be  reversed  like  those  of  the  taste  or  the 
conscience.  There  can  be  no  fashion  in  science. 

A  theory  or  a  proposition  or  an  alleged  fact  may 
be  morally  sound  and  good,  while  yet  it  is  not  logi 
cally  sound  and  good.  A  sentiment  is  true  as 
sentiment  but  not  true  as  science.  There  is  no  moral 
objection  to  ^sop's  fables,  but  if  put  forth  as 
sound  natural  history,  there  would  be  objections  to 
them.  The  New  Testament  records,  which  more 
and  more  people  in  our  day  find  difficulty  in  accept 
ing  as  history,  are  for  the  most  part,  morally  and 
spiritually,  beautiful  and  elevating,  and  to  certain 
natures  this  is  enough.  But  the  man  of  science  asks, 
Are  they  true,  not  as  poetry  or  fable,  but  as  history  ? 
That  feeling  or  mental  disposition  that  responds  to 
fables  and  allegories  is  as  genuine  as  that  which  en 
ables  us  to  detect  truth  from  falsehood,  only  it  can 
not  take  its  place  ;  it  belongs  to  a  different  sphere. 


148  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

There  is  something  in  us  that  delights  in  fables  and 
in  heroic  deeds ;  that  risesv,  superior  to  times  and 
circumstances,  and  makes  the  devotion  of  martyrs 
and  the  triumphs  of  the  Davids  over  the  Goliaths 
tonic  and  refreshing.  There  are  books  and  poems 
that  ventilate  and  tone  up  a  man's  whole  nature. 
We  are  by  ho.  means  %ummed  up  by  our  knowing 
faculties.  Truth  of'  fact  and  truth  of  sentiment 
make  up  life^srid  about  in  the  proportion  of  the 
bone  and  the  fleshly  tissue  in  our  systems.  We 
may  say  there  is  relative  truth  and  absolute  truth. 
All  scientific  truth  if.it  be  truth  is  absolute;  it  is 
verifiable  and  must  holdTgd£>d  at  all  times  and 
places.  A  man's  opinion  of  a  matter,  that  is,  his 
inference  from  observed  facts,  is  true  from  his  con 
ditions  and  point  of  view ;  it  is  the  outcome  of  his 
relations,  capacity,  and  antecedents ;  it  is  modified 
by  his  temperament,  his  culture,  his  health,  his 
sympathies,  his  race,  his  environment,  and  many 
other  things.  If  strictly  speaking  there  are  reli 
gious  truths,  truths  that  in  no  wise  depend  upon  your 
view  or  my  view  of  the  case,  they  are  verifiable. 
But  religious  truths  I  should  say  are  relative  truths, 
and  any  attempt  to  make  them  fixed  and  absolute, 
as  the  creedmongers  have  tried  to  do,  must  end  in 
failure.  Truth  in  all  subjective  matters  is  not  a 
fixed  quantity  ;  it  is  something  that  must  be  ever 
newly  grown  like  organic  Nature  herself. 

A  recent  theological  writer  says  that  when  men  ac 
customed  to  the  demonstrative  evidence  of  science 
"enter  a  province  where  moral  evidence  rather  than 


RELIGIOUS   TRUTH  149 

demonstration  prevails,  they  are  not  unnaturally  in 
clined  to  suppose  that  nothing  in  it  is  settled,  nothing 
ascertained,"  and  very  reasonably,  I  think.  Nothing 
can  be  settled  except  upon  demonstrative  evidence ; 
you  may  think  it  settled  and  wake  up  next  day  to 
find  that  the  floods  of  new  inquiry  have  come  and 
set  it  all  afloat  again.  Moral  evidence  can  settle 
nothing  permanently  ;  it  may  produce  conviction  in 
men's  minds  to-day,  which  some  new  thought  or 
new  spirit  will  chafe  under  to-morrow.  The  moral 
evidences  of  Christianity  —  its  wonderful  growth 
from  such  obscure  beginnings,  the  noble  lives  it  has 
inspired,  its  power  for  good  in  the  world,  etc.  —  have 
great  weight,  but  they  do  not  settle  the  questions 
that  vex  us.  Other  religions  have  grown  in  the 
same  way,  and  been  the  inspiration  of  heroic  lives 
and  the  bond  of  national  prosperity.  It  will  not  do 
to  say,  as  is  so  often  said,  that  the  European  nations 
owe  all  to  Christianity  ;  what  Christianity  owes  to 
the  quality  and  spirit  of  the  European  races  remains 
to  be  determined.  Why  did  it  not  transform  the 
Eastern  peoples  as  well  ?  Science  has  done  more 
for  the  development  of  Western  civilization  in  one 
hundred  years  than  Christianity  did  in  eighteen 
hundred.  Again,  why  has  science  not  done  as  much 
for  the  Oriental  nations  ?  There  we  are  ;  to  dogma 
tize  in  these  matters  is  dangerous  business.  The 
factor  of  race,  the  factor  of  environment,  climate, 
geology,  rivers,  mountain  chains,  variety  of  coast 
line,  etc.,  all  enter  into  the  problem. 

The    writer    I  have  already  quoted  says,   "  Too 


lf)0  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

high  demands  cannot  be  made  on  theology  as  to  the 
legitimacy  and  scientific  accuracy  of  its  methods." 
The  scientific  method  is  the  same  whether  in  the 
hands  of  the  man  of  science  or  the  theologian.  It 
is  simply  proving  all  things  and  holding  fast  that 
which  is  true. 

When  our  doctors  of  divinity  treat  Christianity 
as  an  evolution,  do  they  not  thereby  abandon  the 
claim  that  it  is  a  revelation  ?  It  cannot  be  both.  If 
it  is  an  evolution,  if  it  came  logically  and  naturally 
out  of  what  went  before,  if  it  was  a  growth,  a  de 
velopment  of  the  religious  conscience  of  man,  then 
it  takes  its  place  in  the  course  of  historical  events, 
and  the  man  of  science  may  accept  it.  In  that  case 
what  becomes  of  the  claim  that  it  was  a  revelation, 
something  that  had  no  relation  to  what  went  before, 
something  interjected  into  the  course  of  mundane 
history  from  without,  an  interpolation,  a  miraculous 
ray  of  light  from  out  the  heavens  ?  Science  knows 
evolution,  but  it  can  make  nothing  of  revelation. 
Pilate's  old  question,  What  is  truth  ?  is  never  out 
of  date. 

Ask  what  is  the  truth  in  mathematics,  and  the 
answer  is  easy  :  two  and  two  make  four  ;  a  straight 
line  is  the  shortest  distance  between  two  points  ;  the 
angles  of  a  triangle  are  equal  to  two  right  angles,  etc. 
Ask  what  is  the  truth  in  science,  and  the  answer 
comes  as  promptly,  though  here  the  field  is  as  yet 
only  fairly  entered  upon ;  ask  what  is  the  truth  in 
politics,  and  here  we  are  bound  to  say  all  men  are 
liars  ;  the  truth  is  whatever  you  can  convince  your- 


RELIGIOUS   TRUTH  151 

self  is  true.  Ask  what  is  the  truth  in  political 
economy,  in  ethics,  in  metaphysics,  and  lastly  in 
religion,  and  the  answers  are  as  various  as  the  minds 
of  men.  It  is  certain  that  it  is  not  a  fixed  quantity, 
that  it  is  relative  and  changes  as  the  wants  and  con 
ditions  of  men  change.  We  cannot  close  our  minds 
upon  the  truth  in  these  spheres  and  say  "  I  have  it," 
any  more  than  we  can  close  our  hands  upon  the 
light  and  say  "  I  have  it."  The  good  and  the  had, 
the  beautiful  and  the  ugly,  are  relative  terms ;  no 
fast  and  hard  lines  can  here  be  drawn,  all  is  plastic, 
fluctuating,  growing.  But  science  draws  fast  and 
hard  lines  and  can  alone  formulate  definite  truths. 
A  friend  and  correspondent  of  Coleridge  writing  for 
the  benefit  of  his  children  said  that  through  the  inr 
fluence  of  that  philosopher  he  had  been  able  to  ar 
rive  at  settled  and  definite  conclusions  upon  all 
matters  to  which  he  attached  value  or  interest. 
And  then  he  adds  with  great  wisdom,  "  When  I  say 
that  I  have  arrived  at  settled  conclusions,  you  will 
not  for  a  moment  believe  that  my  opinions  can  or 
ought  to  be  received  by  others  of  a  totally  different 
experience  as  truths  for  their  minds  ;  still  less  that 
matters  which  depend  upon  individual  experience 
and  temperament  can  be  permanent  truths  for  all 
time."  What  a  lesson  for  us  all.  Every  man 
builds  or  tries  to  build  himself  a  house  of  truth  of 
some  sort,  to  shelter  him  from  the  great  void,  but 
how  foolish  to  expect  us  all  to  build  alike  or  go  to 
the  same  quarry  for  our  material ;  or  that  our  house 
could  serve  for  our  children  for  all  coming  time. 


152  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

How  long  it  will  serve  depends  upon  how  large, 
how  well,  how  conveniently  it  is  built. 

Spiritual  truths  are  spiritually  discerned  un 
doubtedly,  but  I  should  deny  that  the  content  of 
the  popular  creeds  belonged  to  the  region  of  spirit 
ual  truths.  They  contain  definite  propositions  that 
relate  to  historical  events,  —  to  the  soul  of  man  con 
sidered  as  an  entity  in  and  of  itself,  to  its  nature 
and  destiny.  They  make  definite  statements  about 
the  actual  world  of  events,  about  an  historical  per 
sonage,  about  a  concrete  book,  about  a  past  race  of 
men,  about  birth  and  generation,  etc.  Now  these 
are  not  spiritual  truths  and  they  are  not  spiritually 
discerned.  They  are  material  truths,  if  truths  at 
all,  and  they  are  discerned  by  the  reason  and  under 
standing.  What,  then,  is  spiritual  truth  ?  That 
which  appeals  to  the  soul  as  distinct  from  the  rea 
son  and  the  intellect,  or  to  our  higher  and  finer  sense 
of  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  world.  The  Ser 
mon  on  the  Mount  contains  spiritual  truth :  The 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you ;  except  ye  be 
come  as  little  children  ;  unto  the  pure  are  all  things 
pure.  The  brotherhood  of  man  is  a  spiritual  truth. 
St.  Paul  is  full  of  spiritual  truth.  Emerson's  es- 
Bays  are  full  of  spiritual  truth,  as  are  all  the  great 
poems  of  the  world. 

We  want  the  exact  scientific  truth  in  many  things, 
—  in  all  that  concerns  our  physical  relation  to  the 
world,  in  all  the  practical  affairs  of  life,  in  agricul 
ture,  in  mechanics,  in  political  economy,  in  all  that 
pertains  to  trade,  to  money,  to  banking,  and  cur- 


RELIGIOUS   TRUTH  153 

rency,  etc.  The  Occidental  mind  wants  this  same 
kind  of  truth  in  its  religion  because  its  religion  is 
a  definite  means  to  a  definite  end  ;  it  is  in  a  way 
a  question  of  climate  and  subsistence ;  it  has  refer 
ence  entirely  to  well-being  in  some  future  state.  If 
there  is  no  immortality  we  have  no  use  for  religion. 
If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  Is  there  a  God 
as  literally  as  there  is  a  governor  or  president  ? 
Is  the  Bible  the  word  of  God?  Did  Christ  rise 
from  the  dead  ?  Is  the  church  the  gate  to  heaven  ? 
If  so,  which  church  ?  In  the  popular  mind  religion 
hinges  upon  these  questions,  and  it  demands  a  sci 
entific  answer  to  them.  The  good  Catholic  believes 
the  Pope  to  be  as  actually  and  literally  the  deputy 
or  vicegerent  of  God  as  the  priest  is  the  visible  ser 
vant  of  the  Pope. 

Into  the  formation  of  our  minds  and  into  the  con 
duct  of  our  lives  there  enter  truths,  opinions,  and 
sentiments.  Pour  fifths  of  our  lives  are  probably 
made  up  of  sentiment ;  that  is,  feeling,  aspiration,  at 
traction,  repulsion,  etc.  A  sentiment  may  be  rela 
tively  true  or  false,  it  may  arise  from  a  narrow  view 
or  a  broad  view,  but  it  is  equally  potent  whether 
true  or  false.  Demonstrable  truth  enters  into  our 
lives  scarcely  more  than  the  mineral  elements  enter 
into  our  bodies,  but  our  lives  could  not  go  on  for  a 
moment  without  them. 

The  religious  emotion  is  true  as  an  emotion ;  it 
is  when  we  try  to  translate  it  into  the  language  of 
the  reason  and  the  understanding  that  the  trouble 
begins.  Its  reality  does  not  prove  the  reality  of 


154  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

the  definite  objects  upon  which  it  centres  in  our 
case  any  more  than  it  did  with  the  pagan  peoples. 
If  religion  is  not  its  own  reward  as  much  as  art  or 
science  is,  if  it  is  not  salvation  here  and  now,  if  it 
be  not  in  the  life  and  character  of  a  man  like 
Ingersoll  as  truly  as  in  the  life  and  character  of  a 
man  like  Mr.  Moody,  then  it  is  a  delusion  and  a 
snare. 


XI 

POINTS   OF   VIEW 

"TTTHAT  a  wide  difference  it  makes  whether  we 
^  *  look  upon  the  world  from  the  point  of  view 
of  art,  the  point  of  view  of  science  or  the  intellect, 
or  from  the  point  of  view  of  evangelical  religion. 
Only  from  the  latter  point  of  view  do  we  see  what 
is  called  sin.  The  theologian  looks  upon  the  world, 
and  he  sees  wickedness,  corruption,  sin.  The  man 
of  intellect  looks  upon  it,  and  he  sees  a  thousand  in 
teresting  problems  and  objects,  issues,  tendencies, 
struggles,  failures,  and  fulfillments.  The  artist  looks 
upon  it,  and  he  sees  pictures  everywhere,  form  pro 
portion,  light  and  shade,  colors  and  values.  How 
unartistic  is  the  heaven  of  the  theologian  to  the 
artist ;  how  uninteresting  and  impossible  to  the  man 
of  science.  You  cannot  make  a  picture  all  white ; 
you  cannot  have  power  and  motion,  growth  and  de 
velopment,  in  a  world  where  there  is  no  clashing  or 
opposition  or  imperfection,  where  there  is  no  evil, 
but  only  the  good  of  the  pious  enthusiast. 

To  the  scientist  and  to  the  artist  or  poet,  the  world 
as  we  know  it  is  a  much  more  desirable  place  to  live 
than  the  world  as  imagined  and  longed  for  by  the 
devout  of  Christendom.  Without  sin  in  the  world 
where  would  be  th*  merit  of  the  saint?  Without 


156  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

hindrance  and  delays  and  disappointments  how  could 
character  be  developed  ?  Indeed,  what  a  blank, 
meaningless  world  this  would  be  if  the  principles  of 
good  and  evil  were  not  continually  wrestling  with 
each  other  in  it.  This  is  the  verdict  of  the  intel 
lect  and  the  aesthetic  faculties,  and  this  is  the  fruit 
of  the  forbidden  tree.  We  are  not  to  know  this, 
lest  our  struggle  with  evil  be  relaxed.  There  is  no 
doubt  need  enough  of  the  preacher  to  warn  us  of 
our  dangers  and  to  hold  up  before  us  the  standard 
of  the  absolute  good. 

Still  Christendom  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  making 
its  heaven  attractive  ;  that  is,  attractive  to  the  intellect 
or  to  the  faculties  that  find  their  fulfillment  in  this 
world.  We  have  to  imagine  ourselves  differently 
constituted  beings  to  see  any  joy  in  it ;  not  merely 
beings  of  a  higher  spiritual  capacity,  but  beings  fun 
damentally  different.  The  gods  of  the  ancient  world, 
the  pagan  gods,  were  more  or  less  attractive ;  there 
was  much  in  them  that  the  natural  man  responded  to. 
But  the  God  of  Christendom,  the  Jehovah  of  the 
Jews,  or  the  Almighty  Despot  of  Calvinism,  is  not 
attractive ;  we  do  not  spontaneously  like  him ;  Jesus 
as  portrayed  in  the  Gospels  is  attractive  or  lovable, 
but  as  interpreted  in  the  old  theology  he  is  not  at 
tractive.  But  our  good  brother  says,  "  You  must  be 
changed."  Certainly,  but  this  is  just  what  the  intel 
lect  in  the  natural  man  does  not  want  to  be.  He 
wants  to  look  at  and  to  understand  and  appreciate 
these  things  from  the  same  point  of  view  from  which 
he  regards  and  appreciates  nature,  life,  the  visible  uni- 


POINTS   OF   VIEW  157 

verse.  The  man  is  not  changed  when  he  becomes  a 
poet ;  his  feelings  and  capacities  are  heightened.  He 
is  not  changed  when  he  becomes  a  philosopher ;  his 
mind  is  deepened  and  enlarged.  But  to  become  a 
Christian,  as  our  fathers  understood  it,  he  is  to  be 
radically  broken  up  and  turned  about  as  St.  Paul 
was.  His  point  of  view  is  shifted  to  another  sphere. 
His  interest  is  entirely  transferred  to  another  state 
of  existence.  To  the  Christian  this  is  a  lost  and 
ruined  world,  the  races  of  men  are  all  on  the  road 
to  perdition,  the  heathen  nations  have  fed  the  fires 
of  hell  in  all  ages,  this  life  is  but  ashes  and  dung. 
For  the  intellect  or  the  natural  man  to  sympathize 
with  this  view  would  be  to  negative  and  discredit 
its  own  powers  and  aims. 

One  of  the  first  difficulties  the  man  of  science  has 
with  Christianity  is  that  it  is  not  commensurate  with 
the  race  or  with  history.  What  are  you  going  to  do, 
he  asks,  with  the  splendid  peoples  that  lived  before 
the  time  of  Christ  ?  As  a  phase  of  man's  religious 
growth  and  culture  he  can  understand  it,  but  as  a  sys 
tem  that  excludes  from  all  possibilities  of  salvation 
the  greater  part  of  the  human  race,  he  is  bound  to  re 
pudiate  it.  Christianity  affords  the  highest  religious 
type.  This  is  reasonable ;  that  it  inaugurated  the 
only  possible  salvation,  this  is  not  reasonable.  Our 
fathers  got  along  without  steam  and  electricity,  and 
found  life  tolerable.  Greece  flourished  before  Christ 
and  achieved  splendid  results.  Christianity  is  a  great 
advance,  but  it  is  no  more  the  beginning  of  man's 
spiritual  life  than  Buddhism  or  any  other  pagan 


158  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

religion  was.  All  this  is  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  impartial  intellect,  and  is  this  point  of  view  to 
be  denied  ? 

To  the  intellectual  man  evil  is  only  the  privation 
of  good  as  cold  is  the  privation  of  heat.  Indeed, 
this  is  what  St.  Augustine,  speaking  as  a  philoso 
pher,  said.  As  the  life  of  the  globe  depends  upon 
degrees  of  heat  and  cold,  depends  upon  differences, 
fluctuations,  inequalities,  etc.,  so  human  develop 
ment  depends  upon  a  mixture  of  good  and  evil. 
Overcome  evil  with  good,  that  is  growth  in  morals ; 
overcome  ignorance  with  knowledge,  that  is  growth 
in  intellect.  Sin  as  a  state  of  condemnation  or 
alienation  from  God,  in  consequence  of  Adam's 
transgression,  —  of  this  theological  conception  of  sin, 
what  can  the  intellect  know  ?  It  can  know  nothing. 
It  sees  that  the  condition  of  life  everywhere  is  strug 
gle,  in  the  vegetable  as  well  as  in  the  animal  worlds, 
in  the  spiritual  as  in  the  intellectual  realm.  It 
sees  that  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  is 
everywhere  operative.  It  sees  that  ideal  good  never 
is  and  never  can  be  attained.  The  ideal  is  an  air 
line ;  the  practical  is  the  devious  path  through  bog 
and  over  hill. 

Wherever  man  is,  the  ideal  will  soar  above  him. 
Wherever  man  is,  pain  and  conflict  will  attend  him. 
One  of  our  poets,  Mr.  Gilder,  has  dared  affirm  that 
wherever  God  is,  are  pain  and  struggle  also. 

"  By  all  most  noble  in  us,  by  the  light  that  streams 
Into  our  waking  dreams, 

Ah  !  we  who  know  what  Life  is,  let  us  live  ! 
Clearer  and  freer  who  shall  doubt  ? 


POINTS   OF   VIEW  159 

Something  of  dust  and  darkness  cast  forever  out ; 
But  Life,  still  Life,  that  leads  to  higher  Life,  — 
Even  though  the   highest  be  not  free  from  the  immortal 
strife." 

"For  in  all  worlds   there  is  no  Life  without  a  pang,  and  can 
be  naught." 

From  the  point  of  view  of  art  and  science  the  un 
converted  heathen  is  a  more  interesting  creature  than 
the  converted.  Our  knowledge  of  this  world  tells 
us  that  the  religion  and  civilization  of  a  higher  race 
cannot  be  thrust  upon  a  lower.  Every  people  must 
work  out  its  own  salvation,  must  come  to  its  religion 
by  an  original  experience  of  its  own.  But  the  mis 
sionary,  with  his  eye  upon  the  other  world,  sees  these 
pagan  races  in  imminent  danger  of  some  terrible />os£- 
tnortem  calamity,  and  he  fancies  he  has  the  means 
to  rescue  them  from  it. 

Our  religious  teachers  have  always  admitted  the 
intellectual  difficulties  in  the  wray  of  their  faith ;  the 
older  ones  have  declared  them  unsurmountable. 
The  intellect  knows  nothing  of  a  revealed  religion, 
of  vicarious  atonement  and  the  like.  All  these 
things,  all  the  supernatural  elements  in  our  faith, 
have  their  origin  and  authority  in  the  religious  sen 
timent,  in  the  hopes,  fears,  intuitions,  and  aspira 
tions  of  mankind.  Whatever  proof  these  afford,  it 
is  a  kind  of  proof  that  cannot  be  addressed  to  our 
rational  faculties. 

The  mere  intellectual  assent  to  a  religious  doctrine 
or  scheme  is  usually  barren,  because  religion  has  re 
ference  to  action,  conduct,  life.  The  will,  the  heart, 
the  imagination,  must  be  enlisted,  the  moral  nature 


1GO  THE    LUJHT   OF   DAY 

aroused.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  great  mass  of  man 
kind  give  any  intellectual  assent  to  the  doctrines  of 
their  faith.  The  fathers  of  the  church,  in  attempting 
to  give  an  intellectual  basis  to  them,  were  led  into 
curious  absurdities.  Thus  Irenaeus  said  there  must 
be  four  Gospels,  instead  of  three,  because  there  were 
four  winds,  and  four  corners  of  heaven,  etc.  Our 
theologians,  in  their  appeal  to  reason,  have  not  fared 
much  better.  Worship,  veneration,  adoration,  are 
not  intellectual  acts,  but  motions  of  the  spirit.  Our 
assent  to  a  doctrine  of  science,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
necessarily  intellectual.  It  is  not  barren,  because 
intellectual  results  are  alone  to  be  expected.  The 
doctrine  of  evolution  has  stimulated  the  mind  of  our 
age  to  an  unprecedented  degree.  It  has  a  bearing 
*tfpon  religion  only  when  religion  appeals  to  the  rea 
son  with  a  rival  scheme  of  creation.  Science  alone 
can  meet  our  demand  for  knowledge  of  the  visible 
world.  But  after  science  has  done  its  best,  is  not 
the  mystery  as  deep  as  ever  ?  Is  there  not  the  same 
ground  for  faith,  worship,  adoration,  as  ever  ? 

Religion  is  older  than  science.  Man  worshiped 
and  adored  long  before  he  sought  the  reasons  and 
the  meaning  of  things.  At  the  same  time  it  must 
be  owned  that  man  has  become  less  and  less  re 
ligions  from  the  first  dawn  of  civilization  to  the 
present  day.  The  intellectual  point  of  view  has 
prevailed  more  and  more.  With  all  our  Chris 
tianity  the  ancient  communities,  Egypt,  Greece, 
Home,  were  much  more  religious  than  we  are ;  that 
is,  life,  both  individual  and  natural,  faced  much 


POINTS   OF   VIEW  161 

more  towards  the  unseen  supernatural  powers.  In 
deed,  the  natural  did  hardly  exist ;  the  supernatural 
was  all  in  all.  The  gods  played  the  leading  part  in 
their  histories  ;  they  really  play  no  part  at  all  in  ours. 
Once  a  year  our  chief  magistrate  issues  his  formal 
Thanksgiving  Proclamation,  and  the  people  through 
out  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  fall  to  and 
gorge  themselves  with  roast  turkey ;  this  is  our  reli 
gious  rite  as  a  nation.  With  the  ancient  pagan  peo 
ples,  religious  motives  entered  into  every  act.  Renan 
does  not  exaggerate  when  he  says  that  the  "  religion 
of  the  ancients  was  the  spinal  marrow  of  the  nation 
itself."  At  Plataea  both  the  Greeks  and  the  Persians 
refrained  for  ten  days  from  making  the  attack,  be 
cause  the  oracles  and  the  victims  were  unfavorable. 
The  armies  had  their  diviners,  upon  whose  word  the 
generals  waited.  Not  military  considerations,  but 
religious  omens  determined  them  when  to  strike. 
No  expedition  was  undertaken  without  consulting 
the  oracles,  and  no  action  fought  without  offering 
sacrifice.  All  through  the  Middle  Ages  see  what 
a  part  religion,  or  what  we  now  call  superstition, 
played  in  the  world  ! 

With  the  ancient  peoples  religion  bore  no  essential 
relation  to  morality  ;  the  most  dark  and  revolting 
crimes  were  committed  in  the  name  of  the  gods. 
The  great  change  in  the  modern  world  is  that  there 
is  no  religion  without  morality.  This  is  the  law  for 
individuals.  Nations  are  probably  as  immoral  to-day 
as  ever  they  were,  just  as  selfish  and  revengeful. 

The  intellectual  point  of  view  is  bound  to  prevail 


162  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

more  and  more.  Our  knowing  faculties  are  certainly 
outstripping  our  intuitions  and  our  devotional  in 
stincts.  What  will  be  the  final  result  ? 

The  current  religion  gets  into  trouble  the  moment 
it  would  make  its  point  of  view  coincide  with  the 
intellectual  point  of  view,  because  its  view  is  partial 
and  personal ;  it  seeks  a  particular  good,  while  the  in 
tellect  seeks  all  truth,  seeks  to  see  the  thing  as  it  is 
in  itself.  Religion  seeks  to  see  the  thing  only  as  it 
stands  related  to  its  particular  end  helping  or  hin 
dering.  The  man  who  is  concerned  about  the  safety 
of  his  soul  sustains  quite  a  different  relation  to  the 
world  from  the  man  who  is  concerned  only  about 
what  is  true,  or  what  is  beautiful,  or  what  is  good, 
in  and  of  themselves.  Only  the  latter  is  a  disinter 
ested  observer. 

Will  religion  survive  science  ?  Not  as  dogma 
and  creed,  or  as  intellectual  propositions,  or  belief  in 
the  supernatural,  but  as  spiritual  attraction,  as  faith, 
hope,  love.  When  man  ceases  to  feel,  in  some 
measure,  the  mystery  and  spirituality  of  the  universe, 
and  the  presence  of  a  power  in  which  we  live,  and 
move,  and  have  our  being,  he  will  have  reversed  his 
history  and  gone  backwards  instead  of  forwards. 


XII 

GOD  AND  NATURE 

"TIIT~ALF  a  century  or  more  ago  a  pious  Scotch  fam- 
—  ily  lately  come  to  this  country  moved  into  the 
town  where  I  was  born.  As  they  were  coming  through 
a  deep  gorge  in  the  mountains  where  the  scenery  was 
unusually  wild  and  forbidding,  one  of  the  little  boys, 
looking  forth  upon  the  savage  and  desolate  prospect, 
nestled  closer  to  his  mother  and  asked  with  bated 
breath,  "  Hither,  is  there  a  God  here  ?  "  The  little 
boy's  question  sprang  from  a  feeling  which  probably 
most  of  us  share.  The  desolate,  the  terrible,  the 
elemental,  the  inhuman  in  nature,  are  always  more 
or  less  a  shock  to  one's  notions  of  the  existence  of  a 
beneficent  Supreme  Being.  In  storms  at  sea,  amid 
the  fury  and  wild  careering  of  the  elements,  or  in 
tempest  and  darkness  upon  the  land,  when  riot  and 
destruction  stalk  abroad,  how  faint  and  far  off  seems 
the  notion  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  !  The  other 
day  in  looking  over  some  of  Professor  Langley's  views 
of  the  sun,  photographic  representations  of  those 
immense  craters  or  openings  into  the  solar  furnace 
into  which  our  little  earth  would  disappear  as 
quickly  as  a  snowflake  into  the  mouth  of  a  blast 
furnace,  the  question  of  the  little  Scotch  boy  came 
to  me,  "  Is  there  a  God  here  ?  "  It  is  incredible. 


1G4  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

The  utmost  one  can  do,  he  cannot  begin  to  conceive 
of  a  being  adequate  to  these  things.  Under  the  old 
dispensation,  before  the  advent  of  science,  when  this 
little  world  was  all,  and  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars 
were  merely  fixtures  overhead  to  give  light  and 
warmth,  the  conception  of  a  being  adequate  to  cre 
ate  and  control  it  all  was  easier.  The  storms  were 
expressive  of  his  displeasure,  the  heavens  were  his 
throne,  and  the  earth  was  his  footstool.  But  in  the 
light  of  modern  astronomy  one  finds  himself  looking 
in  vain  for  the  God  of  his  fathers,  the  magnified 
man  who  ruled  the  ancient  world.  In  his  place  we 
have  an  infinite  and  eternal  Power  whose  expres 
sion  is  the  visible  universe,  and  to  whom  man  is  no 
more  and  no  less  than  any  other  creature. 

Hence  when  the  man  of  science  says,  "  There  is  no 
God,"  he  only  gives  voice  to  the  feeling  of  the  in 
adequacy  of  the  old  anthropomorphic  conception,  in 
the  presence  of  the  astounding  facts  of  the  universe. 

When  I  look  up  at  the  starry  heavens  at  night 
and  reflect  upon  what  it  is  that  I  really  see  there,  I 
am  constrained  to  say,  "  There  is  no  God."  The 
mind  staggers  in  its  attempt  to  grasp  the  idea  of  a 
being  that  could  do  that.  It  is  futile  to  attempt  it. 
It  is  not  the  works  of  some  God  that  I  see  there.  I 
am  face  to  face  with  a  power  that  baflles  speech.  I 
see  no  lineaments  of  personality,  no  human  traits, 
but  an  energy  upon  whose  currents  solar  systems  are 
but  bubbles.  In  the  presence  of  it  man  and  the 
race  of  man  are  less  than  motes  in  the  air.  I  doubt 
if  any  mind  can  expand  its  conception  of  God  sufti- 


GOD   AND   NATURE  165 

ciently  to  meet  the  astounding  disclosures  of  mod 
ern  science.  It  is  easier  to  say  there  is  no  God.  The 
universe  is  so  -zmhuman,  that  is,  it  goes  its  way 
with  so  little  thought  of  man.  He  is  but  an  incident, 
not  an  end.  We  must  adjust  our  notions  to  the  dis 
covery  that  things  are  not  shaped  to  him,  but  that 
he  is  shaped  to  them.  The  air  was  not  made  for 
his  lungs,  but  he  has  lungs  because  there  is  air  ;  the 
light  was  not  created  for  his  eye,  but  he  has  eyes  be 
cause  there  is  light.  All  the  forces  of  nature  are 
going  their  own  way ;  man  avails  himself  of  them, 
or  catches  a  ride  as  best  he  can.  If  he  keeps  his  seat 
he  prospers ;  if  he  misses  his  hold  and  falls  he  is 
crushed.  Mankind  used  to  think  that  the  dews  and 
rains  were  sent  for  their  benefit,  and  the  church  still 
encourages  this  idea  by  praying  for  rain  in  times  of 
drought,  but  the  notion  is  nearly  dissipated.  To 
such  a  mind  as  Cardinal  Newman  the  spectacle  of 
the  world  caused  a  similar  moral  shiver  and  doubt 
to  that  which  crossed  the  mind  of  the  little  Scotch 
boy  when  he  looked  out  upon  the  wild  pass  in  the 
mountains.  He  does  not  see  God  there  ;  he  says  it 
is  like  looking  into  a  mirror  and  not  seeing  his  own 
face.  And  the  proofs  that  are  drawn  from  without, 
from  the  facts  of  human  society  and  the  course  of  his 
tory,  do  not  warm  and  enlighten  him,  do  not  take  away 
the  winter  of  his  unbelief ;  and  the  inference  he  draws 
is  that  either  there  is  no  God,  or  else  that  man  is 
alienated  from  him,  —  "  the  human  race  is  implicated 
in  some  terrible  aboriginal  calamity  "  (The  Fall  of 
Man).  But  the  natural  philosopher  must  discard 


166  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

the  theological  explanation,  and  he  is  left  with  the 
other  alternative,  "  There  is  no  God."  His  piety 
takes  this  impious  form.  His  belief  is  best  expressed 
by  a  denial ;  he  will  be  an  atheist  rather  than  name 
the  unnamable.  Newman  finds  his  God  when  he 
looks  into  his  own  conscience,  and  probably  this  is 
the  only  way  he  is  to  be  found.  From  this  sanc 
tuary  the  universe,  with  its  suns  and  systems,  and 
the  world,  with  its  horrors  and  failures,  are  shut  out. 
We  see  a  God  made  more  or  less  in  our  own  image  ; 
he  is  human  and  mindful  of  us ;  he  is  a  necessity  of 
thought  and  of  our  moral  nature.  But  with  the 
man  of  science  the  visible  universe  is  paramount, 
and  he  will  probably  always  ask,  "  Is  there  a  God 
here  ?  " 

"  Howbeit,  every  nation  made  gods  of  their  own." 
Man  is,  and  always  has  been,  a  maker  of  gods.  It 
has  been  the  most  serious  and  significant  occupation 
of  his  sojourn  in  the  world.  Nearly  every  race  and 
people  have  tried  their  hand  at  making  a  god  of 
some  kind  around  which  their  religious  aspirations 
and  superstitions  could  cluster,  and  on  all  occa 
sions  they  have  found  the  material  for  their  deities 
near  at  hand. 

As  man  arrives  at  consciousness,  he  soon  recog 
nizes  a  Power  greater  than  himself,  over  which  he  has 
no  control,  and  of  which  he  is  either  an  object  of 
sport  or  solicitude.  This  power  is  what  we  call 
Nature,  the  nearest  and  greatest  fact  of  all.  This 
is  the  mountain  out  of  which,  or  some  fragment  of 
which,  all  peoples  have  carved  their  gods,  giving 


GOD   AND   NATURE  167 

them  the  form  and  likeness  of  such  ideal  as  they 
were  capable  of. 

At  first  man  deifies  and  worships  various  objects 
of  visible  material  nature.  The  first  god  was  prob 
ably  the  sun.  Nearly  all  early  races  have  been 
sun  worshipers.  The  splendor,  the  power,  the 
bounty  of  the  sun,  is  the  most  obvious  of  all  the 
facts  of  nature.  Later,  as  man  developed  and  his 
mind  opened,  he  made  himself  gods  out  of  invisible 
nature.  He  projected  his  own  ideal  into  the  universe 
and  worshiped  that. 

Undoubtedly  the  most  skillful  artists  in  this 
field,  as  in  so  many  others,  were  the  Greeks ;  their 
gods  were  the  most  beautiful  and  interesting  of  all. 
Apollo  stands  as  a  type  of  grace  and  power  to  all 
succeeding  races.  Then  their  lesser  divinities,  — 
how  charming,  how  interesting  they  all  are,  the  works 
of  master  hands. 

The  old  Hebrews  were  much  less  as  artists,  but 
much  greater  as  prophets  ;  hence  Jehovah,  the  God 
of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  is  the  most  awful,  the 
most  imposing,  and  the  most  imminent  of  all  the 
gods.  How  cruel,  how  terrible,  how  jealous,  —  a 
magnified  and  heaven-filling  despot  and  king.  With 
a  gentle  and  loving  alter  ego  or  deputy,  who  stands 
between  his  stern  and  awful  majesty  and  guilty  and 
trembling  man,  namely,  Jesus  Christ,  he  is  still 
the  God  of  the  most  enlightened  of  the  human  race. 
With  what  power  and  solemnity  he  figures  in  the 
old  Bible  ;  how  he  filled  and  shook  the  hearts  of 
the  old  bards  and  prophets !  Open  the  Scriptures 


1C8  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

almost  anywhere,  and  one  seems  to  hear  his  awful 
voice,  and  feel  his  terrible  tread.  It  shakes  the 
earth  ;  it  fills  the  heavens ;  the  universe  is  the 
theatre  of  his  love  and  wrath.  What  an  abysmal 
depth  of  conscience  in  those  old  Hebrews ;  what 
capacity  for  remorse,  for  reverence,  for  fear,  for  ter 
ror,  for  adoration ;  what  a  sense  of  the  value  of 
righteousness,  and  of  the  dreadfulness  of  sin  !  In 
them  we  see  the  unsounded  depths  of  the  religious 
spirit,  —  its  tidal  seas;  bitter  and  estranging,  but 
sublime.  As  I  have  elsewhere  said  all  other  sacred 
books  are  tame,  are  but  inland  seas,  so  to  speak, 
compared  with  this  briny  deep  of  the  Hebrew  Bible. 
Little  wonder  it  still  sways  the  hearts  and  lives  of 
men.  Their  imaginations  go  out  upon  it.  Im 
mensity  broods  over  it.  It  is  as  tender  as  a  tear  or 
as  cruel  as  death.  It  is*  a  record  of  the  darkest 
deeds,  and  luminous  with  the  sublimest  devotion 
and  piety.  It  is  archetypal,  elemental.  The  light 
of  eternity  is  upon  its  face.  Other  books,  other 
bibles,  are  as  if  written  in  houses  or  temples  or 
sheltered  groves  ;  here  is  the  solemnity  and  grandeur 
of  the  mountain  tops,  or  of  the  great  Asiatic  plains 
under  the  midnight  stars.  Man  is  alone  with  the 
Eternal,  and  with  fear  and  trembling  walks  and 
talks  with  him. 

How  our  fathers  read  and  communed  with  this 
book !  How  much  of  the  culture  of  the  world  has 
come  out  of  it !  The  light,  the  entertainment,  the 
stimulus,  which  we  find  in  literature,  in  art,  in  sci 
ence,  our  fathers  found  in  this  volume. 


GOD   AND   NATUKE  169 

The  mystery  of  life  deepens  when  we  set  up  a 
being,  no  matter  how  large  and  all  powerful,  over 
the  universe  apart  from  and  independent  of  it,  and  to 
whom  we  assign  human  motives  and  purposes,  — 
some  sort  of  economic  scheme  with  reference  to  it. 
When  a  good  man  dies  with  his  work  half  done,  how 
mysterious,  we  say,  that  the  master  of  the  vineyard 
should  thus  strike  down  one  of  his  most  useful  ser 
vants  and  spare  so  many  worthless  and  worse  than 
worthless  ones.  The  universe  viewed  in  the  light  of 
anything  like  human  economy  is  indeed  a  puzzle. 
But  this  is  not  the  right  view.  We  must  get  rid  of 
the  great  moral  governor,  or  head  director.  He  is  a 
fiction  of  our  own  brains.  WTe  must  recognize  only 
Nature,  the  All ;  call  it  God  if  we  will,  but  divest  it 
of  all  anthropological  conceptions.  Nature  we  know  ; 
we  are  cf  it ;  we  are  in  it.  But  this  paternal  Provi 
dence  above  Nature  —  events  are  constantly  knocking 
it  down.  Here  is  this  vast  congeries  of  vital  forces 
which  we  call  Nature,  regardless  of  time,  because  it 
has  all  time,  regardless  of  waste  because  it  is  the 
All,  regardless  of  space  because  it  is  infinite,  regard 
less  of  man  because  man  is  a  part  of  it,  regardless  x^f 
life  because  it  is  the  sum  total  of  life,  gaining  what 
it  spends,  conserving  what  it  destroys,  always  young, 
always  old,  reconciling  all  contradictions  —  the  sum 
and  synthesis  of  all  powers  and  qualities,  infinite 
and  incomprehensible.  This  is  all  the  God  we  can 
know,  and  this  we  cannot  help  but  know.  We  want 
no  evidence  of  this  God. 


170  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

"  Far  or  forgot  to  me  is  near; 

Shadow  and  sunlight  are  the  same; 
The  vanished  gods  to  me  appear; 
And  one  to  me  are  shame  and  fame." 

Men  labor  to  prove  the  existence  of  their  God,  but 
labor  never  so  much,  and  you  cannot  prove  the  non- 
existence  of  this  God.  Your  proof  to  the  contrary, 
he  is  that  also. 

Such  a  notion  seems  to  orphan  the  universe  to 
some  souls,  but  need  it  be  so  ?  This  vital  Nature 
out  of  which  we  came,  out  of  which  father  and 
mother  came,  out  of  which  all  men  came,  and  to 
which  again  we  all  in  due  time  return,  why  should 
we  fear  it  or  distrust  it  ?  It  makes  our  hearts  beat 
and  our  brains  think.  When  it  stops  the  beating 
and  the  thinking,  will  it  not  be  well  also  ?  It 
looked  after  us  before  we  were  born  ;  it  will  look 
after  us  when  we  are  dead.  Every  particle  of  us 
will  be  taken  care  of  ;  the  force  of  every  heart-beat 
is  conserved  somewhere,  somehow.  The  psychic 
force  or  principle  of  which  I  am  a  manifestation 
will  still  go  on.  There  is  no  stoppage  and  no 
waste,  forever  and  ever.  My  consciousness  ceases 
as  a  flame  ceases,  but  that  which  made  my  conscious 
ness  does  not  cease.  What  comfort  is  that  to  the 
me  ?  Ah,  the  me  wants  to  go  on  and  on.  But 
let  the  me  learn  that  only  Xature  goes  on  and  on, 
that  the  law  which  makes  the  me  and  unmakes  it 
is  alone  immortal,  and  that  it  is  best  so.  Identity 
is  a  thought,  a  concept  of  our  minds,  and  not  a  pro 
perty  of  our  minds. 

The  universe  is  so  stupendous,  so  unspeakable, 


GOD   AND   NATURE  171 

that  we  dare  not,  cannot,  name  any  end  or  purpose 
for  which  it  exists.  It  is  because  it  is.  If  man 
exists  on  other  worlds,  or  if  he  does  not  exist,  it  is 
all  the  same.  The  superior  and  the  inferior  planets 
may  run  their  course  and  life  not  appear  upon  them. 
It  is  just  like  the  prodigality,  the  indifference  of 
Nature.  If  the  conditions  are  favorable  man  will 
appear;  if  not,  not.  They  are  no  more  there  for 
his  sake  than  yonder  river  is  there  for  the  sake  of 
the  fishes,  or  yonder  clay  bank  for  the  sake  of  the 
brickmakers.  Space  is  no  doubt  strewn  with  dead 
worlds  and  dead  suns  as  thickly  as  yonder  field  with 
dead  boulders,  and  with  worlds  upon  which  only  the 
rudiments  of  life  can  ever  develop,  too  hot  or  too 
cold.  Our  own  earth  must  have  been  millions  of 
years  without  man,  and  it  will  again  be  millions 
without  him.  He  is  the  insect  of  a  summer  hour. 
The  scheme  of  the  universe  is  too  big  for  us  to 
grasp  —  so  big  that  it  is  no  scheme  at  all.  The 
infinite  —  what  is  that  ?  Is  it  equal  to  absolute 
negation  ?  It  is  when  we  have  such  thoughts  that 
all  notions  of  a  God  disappear  and  one  says  in  his 
heart,  "  There  is  no  God."  Any  God  we  can  con 
ceive  of  is  inadequate.  The  universe  is  no  more  a 
temple  than  it  is  a  brothel  or  a  library.  The  Cos 
mos  knows  no  God  —  it  is  super  deus.  In  the  light 
of  the  nebular  hypothesis  how  one  wilts  !  How 
vain  all  your  striving  and  ambition.  The  proudest 
records  of  earth  must  perish  like  autumn  leaves. 


XIII 
A   HINT  FROM   FRANKLIN 

"TN  his  autobiography  Franklin  speaks  of  a  certain 
•  sect  of  the  Dunkers  of  his  time  who  had  wisely 
refused  to  print  their  confession  of  faith,  lest,  as 
they  progressed  in  spiritual  knowledge,  they  be  too 
much  bound  by  it  and  it  prove  a  bar  and  a  hin 
drance  to  them.  "  When  we  were  first  drawn  to 
gether  as  a  society,"  said  the  Dunker,  "it  had 
pleased  God  to  enlighten  our  minds  so  far  as  to  see 
that  some  doctrines  which  were  esteemed  truths 
were  errors,  and  that  others  which  we  had  esteemed 
errors  were  real  truths.  From  time  to  time  He  has 
been  pleased  to  afford  us  further  light,  and  our  prin 
ciples  have  been  improving  and  our  errors  diminish 
ing."  Franklin  adds  that  "  this  modesty  in  a  sect 
is  perhaps  a  single  instance  in  the  history  of  man 
kind,  every  other  sect  supposing  itself  in  posses 
sion  of  all  truth,  and  that  those  who  differ  are  so 
far  in  the  wrong ;  like  a  man  traveling  in  foggy 
weather,  those  at  some  distance  before  him  in  the 
road  he  saw  wrapped  up  in  the  fog  as  well  as  those 
behind  him,  and  also  the  people  in  the  fields  on 
either  side,  but  near  him  all  appears  clear,  though, 
in  truth,  he  is  as  much  in  the  fog  as  any  of  them." 
These  Dunkers  were  indeed  wise  in  their  day  and 


A   HINT  FROM   FRANKLIN  173 

generation,  and  Franklin  himself  was  perhaps  as 
little  in  the  fog  engendered  by  narrowness  and  dog 
matism  as  any  man  of  his  times.  If  there  is  one 
thing  certain  in  the  history  of  mankind,  it  is  that 
sects  do  outgrow  their  creeds  and  are  compelled 
to  pull  down  and  build  larger  or  else  be  terribly 
pinched  for  room.  Probably  every  one  of  the  evan 
gelical  churches  is  to-day  more  or  less  pinched  by  its 
confessions  of  faith.  No  one  can  read  the  recent  de 
bate  of  the  Congregational  ministers  (1886)  at  Des 
Moines,  on  the  subject  of  Foreign  Missions,  Future 
Probation,  etc.,  without  seeing  how  keenly  the  finer 
and  more  expansive  spirit  among  them  felt  the  hard 
limitations  of  their  creed.  The  Andover  professors 
have  tried  to  enlarge  the  creed  a  little,  or  rather, 
they  have  tried  to  stretch  it  so  as  to  make  it  less 
galling  to  the  modern  humanitarian  feeling,  and  for 
this  they  are  now  arraigned,  and  by  many  of  their 
brethren  already  condemned.  What  pagans  and 
heathens  most  of  us  still  are  in  opinion,  hardly  yet 
more  than  half  liberated  from  the  most  groveling 
and  materialistic  superstitions  of  the  pre-Christian 
world  !  With  our  creedmakers,  heaven  is  still  a 
place,  hell  is  still  an  infernal  abode,  God  is  still 
a  Moloch  or  a  Baal,  Christ  is  still  the  victim  sacri 
ficed  upon  the  altar  to  conciliate  an  offended  deity, 
religion  is  still  a  doctrine  and  a  ceremony,  man  is 
still  the  sport  of  capricious  and  superhuman  powers  ; 
justice  is  still  reprisal  and  reversal ;  and  the  day  of 
judgment  is  still  an  assizes  adjourned  to  some  future 
time.  Creeds  in  our  day  harden  the  heart  j  they 


174  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

shock  our  religious  sensibilities ;  they  make  atheists 
and  scoffers. 

In  a  city  near  me  there  is  a  large  cemetery,  in  a 
neglected  corner  of  which  is  a  multitude  of  children's 
graves  which  have  the  appearance  of  being  outcasts, 
reprobates ;  and  so  they  are.  These  children  were 
not  baptized,  therefore  they  cannot  be  buried  in  con 
secrated  ground ;  their  blameless  little  souls  are  in 
hell,  and  their  bodies  are  huddled  together  here  in 
this  neglected  corner.  This  is  a  glimpse  of  the 
beauty  of  the  Catholic  creed.  The  Jewish  cabalists 
used  to  believe  that  the  utterance  of  certain  magical 
words  engraved  upon  the  seal  of  Solomon  would  trans 
form  a  man  into  a  brute,  or  a  brute  into  a  man.  The 
Catholics  ascribe  the  same  magical  power  to  water 
in  the  hands  of  a  priest.  When  the  service  is  read 
and  the  unconscious  infant  is  baptized,  at  that  mo 
ment  a  miraculous  change  is  wrought  in  its  nature, 
and  Rome  says  with  true  Christian  charity,  "Let 
him  be  accursed  "  who  believes  it  not.  The  mere 
knowledge  of  such  things  is  hurtful.  And  it  re 
quires  rare  Christian  forbearance  to  read  the  An- 
dover  creed  and  not  fall  from  the  grace  of  brotherly 
love.  Is  it  not  easy  to  see  what  short  work  Jesus 
would  have  made  of  these  creedmongers,  he  who  was 
the  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners,  the  rebuker  of 
formalists,  the  contenmer  of  lip  service,  who  laid  all 
the  emphasis  upon  the  condition  of  the  heart  and  the 
attitude  of  the  spirit,  who  said  to  the  chief  priest  of 
the  popular  religion  of  his  time,  "  The  publicans  and 
harlots  go  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven  before  you  "  ? 


A   HINT  FROM  FRANKLIN  175 

Our  doctors  of  divinity  talk  glibly  of  the  growth 
of  religious  thought,  but  seem  to  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  growth  of  religious  thought  means  more 
or  less  a  decay  of  old  beliefs.  There  is  no  growth 
in  anything  without  a  casting  off  and  a  leaving  of 
something  behind.  Growth  in  science  is  to  a  great 
extent  the  discovery  of  new  facts  and  principles, 
which  render  the  old  theories  and  conclusions  unten 
able.  See  how  much  we  have  had  to  unlearn  and 
leave  behind  us  by  reason  of  Darwin's  labors ;  and 
further  advances  already  lessen  the  significance  of 
some  of  his  principles. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  religion  has  not  to  do  with 
outward  facts  and  laws  like  science,  but  with  inward 
spiritual  conditions.  Then  why  seek  to  embody  its 
final  truths  in  formal  propositions  as  if  they  were 
matters  of  exact  demonstration  like  science  ?  The 
creeds  treat  religion  as  objective  fact,  something  to 
be  proved  to  the  understanding  and  to  be  lodged  in 
a  system  of  belief,  like  any  of  the  teachings  of  phy 
sical  science.  Regarded  as  such,  it  is  always  exposed 
to  the  inquiry,  Is  it  true  ?  Is  it  final  ?  If  it  is 
a  subjective  condition,  if  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  really  within,  as  Christ  taught,  then  the  expres 
sion  of  it  in  outward  forms  of  belief  and  creed 
must  change  as  much  as  any  other  philosophy  or 
metaphysics  change.  A  noble  sentiment  mankind 
will  doubtless  always  admire  ;  a  heroic  act,  self- 
sacrifice,  magnanimity,  courage,  enthusiasm,  patri 
otism,  will  always  awaken  a  quick  response ;  so 
will  religion  as  devotion,  or  piety,  or  love,  or  as 


176  THE    LIGHT   OF   DAY 

an  aspiration  after  the  highest  good.  But  as  an 
intellectual  conception  of  God  and  of  the  manner 
of  his  dealings  with  man,  it  must  be  subject  to 
change  and  revision  like  all  other  intellectual  con 
ceptions.  Where  actual  verification  cannot  take 
place,  as  in  science  or  mathematics,  belief  must  for 
ever  fluctuate  like  the  forms  and  colors  of  summer 
clouds.  The  subject  of  it  may  always  be  the  same, 
—  God,  the  soul,  the  eternal  life,  —  but  the  relation 
of  these  and  their  final  meanings  can  never  be  once 
and  forever  settled.  Theology  is  at  best  only  a  ten 
tative  kind  of  science.  Its  conclusions  cannot  have 
anything  like  the  certitude  of  scientific  truth  because 
they  are  not  capable  of  verification. 

Principal  Tulloch,  in  his  "  Movements  of  Reli 
gious  Thought  in  Britain,"  had  the  courage  to  say 
that  "  the  idea  that  theology  is  a  fixed  science,  with 
hard  and  fast  propositions,  partaking  of  the  nature 
of  infallibility,  is  a  superstition  which  cannot  face 
the  light  of  modern  criticism."  Tulloch  further  in 
dicates  that  the  true  rational  standpoint  as  to  creeds 
and  formulas  is  a  profound  distrust  of  them  as  pro 
fessing  "  to  sum  up  Divine  Truth.  Useful  as  '  aids 
to  faith,'  they  are  intolerable  as  limitations  of  faith." 
And  "  limitations  of  faith  "  most  of  the  creeds  un 
doubtedly  are. 

But  the  drift  of  religious  feeling,  if  not  of  reli 
gious  opinion,  is  undoubtedly  away  from  them.  Our 
churches  wisely  keep  their  creeds  pretty  well  in  the 
background.  When  has  any  one  heard  a  doctrinal 
sermon  ?  The  creeds  have  been  retired  to  the  rear 


A   HINT  FROM  FRANKLIN  177 

because  they  are  no  longer  available  in  front.  The 
world  no  longer  asks  what  a  man  believes,  but  what 
is  he  ?  What  is  his  intrinsic  worth  as  a  man  ?  Is- 
he  capable  of  honesty,  of  sobriety,  of  manliness  ? 
Vital  original  qualities,  and  not  speculative  opinions, 
are  certainly  what  tell  most  in  this  world,  however 
it  may  be  in  the  next. 

Religion  as  a  sentiment  is  strong  in  these  times, 
but  religion  as  a  dogma  is  weak.  The  growing  dis 
belief  of  which  we  hear  so  much  is  a  disbelief  in  the 
infallibility  of  dogma,  not  a  disbelief  in  the  need  of 
godliness,  purity,  spirituality,  and  noble  disinter 
ested  lives.  These  things  move  us  as  much  or  more 
than  ever,  but  in  the  creeds  we  hear  only  the  rattling 
of  dry  bones.  How  had  the  Puritan  theology  been 
sloughed  off  by  Emerson,  and  yet  what  a  pure,  stimu 
lating,  ennobling,  religious  spirit  shone  in  that  man 
and  still  shines  in  his  works,  —  the  "  saving  grace  "  of 
heroic  thought  and  aspiration,  if  they  ever  existed. 
The  same  might  be  said  of  Carlyle,  rejecter  as  he 
was  of  the  creed  of  his  fathers.  "  Religion  cannot 
be  incarnated  and  settled  once  for  all  in  forms  of 
creed  and  worship.  It  is  a  continual  growth  in 
every  living  heart  —  a  new  light  to  every  seeing 
eye.  Past  theologies  did  their  best  to  interpret  the 
laws  under  which  man  was  living,  and  to  help  him 
regulate  his  life  thereby.  But  the  laws  of  God  are 
before  us  always,  whether  promulgated  in  Sinai 
thunder  or  otherwise." 

The  progress  of  religious  thought  that  has  been 
made  in  the  last  half  century  is  indicated  in  the 


178  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

writings  and  sermons  of  such  men  as  Maurice,  Camp- 
bell,  Erskine,  Kingsley,  Stanley,  Arnold,  Robertson, 
Tulloch,  Maudsley,  and  others  in  Great  Britain,  and 
in  those  of  Emerson,  Parker,  Hedge,  and  Mulford,  in 
this  country,  —  a  progress  from  the  bondage  of  the 
letter  of  the  law  into  the  freedom  of  the  spirit. 
When  we  think  of  what  these  men  have  said  and 
done,  we  may  look  forward  with  some  confidence,  as 
Goethe  did,  to  a  time  when  "  all  of  us  by  degrees 
will  learn  to  elevate  ourselves  out  of  a  Christianity 
of  catechisms  and  creeds  into  a  Christianity  of  pure 
sentiment  and  noble  action." 


xrv 

MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS 


TTOW  inevitable  that  the  early  races  and  peoples 
-* — '-  should  have  subordinated  the  sun  and  moon, 
etc.,  to  the  earth.  Are  not  these  bodies  clearly  the 
servants  and  attendants  of  the  earth  ?  Are  they  not 
placed  there  in  the  heavens  to  give  us  light  and 
warmth  ?  As  the  sun  sinks  towards  the  horizon,  a 
change  seems  actually  to  come  over  him.  His  light 
grows  thin  and  yellow.  His  day's  work  is  done, 
and  he  is  going  to  rest,  and  in  the  morning  will 
rise  refreshed  and  strong.  In  winter  the  winds  and 
the  storms  appear  to  drive  him  to  the  south,  and  he 
is  feeble  and  disheartened. 

Until  science  enlightens  us  we  never  dream  that 
the  sunset  or  sunrise  is  not  a  solar  phenomenon, 
that  these  changes  relate  entirely  to  our  little  planet, 
that  winter  and  summer,  day  and  night,  etc.,  are  not 
universal  phenomena,  but  local,  and,  as  it  were,  per 
sonal  phases  of  our  planetary  life. 

Now  the  Semitic  cosmogony  upon  which  our  the 
ology  is  founded  is  the  outcome  of  this  same  feeling, 
this  same  geocentric  conception  of  the  universe.  It 
magnifies  the  individual  into  the  universal.  The 
"  London  Spectator,"  in  replying  to  Frederic  Hani- 


180  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

son,  who  thinks  the  Christian  faith  could  not  pos 
sibly  have  originated  in  an  age  that  had  a  helio 
centric  astronomy,  sets  forth  and  enforces  the 
opinion  that  our  astronomical  science  has  not  in  any 
vital  respect  altered  or  impaired  the  validity  of  the 
theological  conceptions  of  the  Jewish  and  Christian 
revelations.  The  "  Spectator "  fails  to  see  that  the 
Semitic  dramaturgy  sprang  out  of  the  colossal  ego 
tism  of  the  early  races,  the  races  who  considered 
themselves  as  the  special  centre  and  object  of 
creations,  an  egotism  that  science  tends  directly  to 
overthrow.  It  is  true  the  old  prophets  and  Biblical 
writers  sought  to  humble  and  belittle  man  in  the' 
presence  of  the  hosts  of  the  starry  heavens,  but  this 
was  only  a  momentary  reaction  from  their  gigantic 
egotism,  which  made  Jehovah  so  solicitous  about 
his  chosen  people.  But  this  is  not  the  point. 

The  point  is  that  the  Copernican  system  of  astro 
nomy  gives  us  a  conception  of  the  order  and  harmony 
of  the  universe  and  of  the  physical  insignificance  of 
our  planet  and  its  subordination  to  other  bodies  that 
is  utterly  inconsistent  with  our  Semitic  theology. 
The  two  are  not  homogeneous ;  they  spring  from 
entirely  different  standpoints.  The  Israelites  may 
have  been  God's  chosen  people,  and  this  earth  of 
ours  may  be  the  apple  of  his  eye  among  the  worlds, 
but  the  tendency  of  the  study  of  science  is  to  utterly 
uproot  such  notions.  Science  liberalizes  and  imper- 
sonalizes.  To  the  impartial  student  of  history  all 
peoples  are  God's  people,  and  all  worlds  alike  the 
scenes  of  his  power.  In  the  light  of  modern  astro- 


MEDITATIONS   AND    CRITICISMS  181 

nomy  what  becomes  of  the  notion  that  the  heavens 
are  above  us,  far  away,  and  are  of  a  higher  and 
purer  creation,  or  hell  beneath  us,  that  the  earth  is 
corrupted  or  blighted  by  the  Fall,  —  kindred  notions 
of  one  theology  ?  Do  we  not  know  that  the  earth 
is  a  star  in  the  heavens,  as  incorruptible  and  unde- 
filed  as  the  rest  ?  and  that  all  worlds  are  kindred 
and  of  our  stuff;  that  there  is  no  up  and  no  down, 
no  high  and  no  low  in  the  universe  ?  The  light 
ning  does  not  come  out  of  heaven,  nor  the  rain  out 
of  heaven,  but  out  of  the  clouds.  An  eclipse  is  not 
a  warning  or  a  calamity,  but  purely  a  natural  event, 
merely  the  lunar  or  the  terrestrial  shadow.  Our 
actual  physical  smallness  and  insignificance  is  what 
science  reveals ;  our  grandeur  and  importance  is 
what  the  eye  and  the  untutored  mind  behold. 

Science  is  impersonal ;  it  tends  to  belittle  and  dif 
fuse  man.  Theology  and  literature  tend  to  exalt 
him,  and  concentrate  him,  and  set  him  above  all. 
Mythology,  theology,  philosophy,  literature,  all  ex 
aggerate  man  and  distort  his  true  relations  to  the 
universe ;  but  in  these  latter  ages  comes  science  and 
shows  man  what  he  really  is,  where  he  belongs  in 
the  scheme  of  the  whole,  and  what  an  insect  of  an 
hour,  an  ephemera  of  a  moment,  he  really  is,  and 
what  a  bubble  is  the  world  he  inhabits.  In  a  late 
religious  work  by  Julia  Wedgewood  I  find  this  re 
mark  :  — 

"  When  once  Galileo  and  Newton  had  forced  the 
world  to  recognize  that  Heaven,  if  it  was  anywhere, 
was  everywhere,  the  moral  took  a  new  direction. 


182  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

The  antithesis  of  Heaven  and  Earth  vanished  from 
the  inward  as  well  as  from  the  outward  world. 
Human  nature  became  interesting  for  its  own  sake." 

ii 

One  of  the  most  liberal-minded  doctors  of  divinity 
allowed  himself  the  other  day  to  speak  slightingly 
of  the  "  vaunted  scientific  method,"  as  if  the  scienti 
fic  method  was  some  new-fangled  notion  that  had 
recently  become  current,  some  patent  process  or 
labor-saving  machine  for  obtaining  truth ;  as  if 
men  had  not  always  used  the  scientific  method  ;  as 
if  it  was  not  as  natural  to  the  mind  as  walking  to 
the  body.  When  we  sift  evidence  or  search  into  the 
truth  or  falsity  of  any  objective  proposition,  we  in 
evitably  use  the  scientific  method.  It  is  the  method 
of  proceeding  from  cause  to  effect,  of  proving  all 
things,  of  testing  every  link  in  the  chain  which 
binds  one  fact  to  another.  It  has  come  into  promi 
nence  in  our  time  because  of  the  great  advance  of 
physical  science.  Men  are  applying  this  method  to 
questions  that  heretofore  have  been  considered  above 
its  reach.  Theological  questions  are  brought  within 
its  range,  much  to  the  disgust  of  the  theologians. 
Of  many  things  that  have  been  taken  for  granted 
men  are  beginning  to  ask,  Are  they  true  ?  and  are 
applying  the  tests  of  this  kind  of  truth.  All  the 
events  and  occurrences  recorded  in  the  Bible  are 
subject  to  the  inquiry,  Are  they  true  ?  If  we  apply 
to  them  the  scientific  method,  what  is  the  result  ? 
James  Martineau,  for  instance,  makes  use  of  the 


MEDITATIONS  AND   CRITICISMS  183 

scientific  method  when  he  shows  so  convincingly 
that  the  Synoptic  Gospels  must  all  have  been  de 
rived  from  one  common  source.  If  these  records, 
he  says,  were  independent  accounts  of  the  words 
and  doings  of  Jesus  by  the  disciples  whose  names 
they  bear,  it  is  incredible  that  they  should  agree  so 
closely  in  all  their  details ;  the  different  writers 
would  have  witnessed  and  would  have  recorded 
different  scenes  and  events.  Only  of  one  thirteenth 
of  the  days  of  the  public  life  of  Jesus  do  we  have 
any  record  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  Were  these 
Gospels  each  an  original,  or  the  record  of  independ 
ent  witnesses,  we  should  have  had  the  events  and 
the  utterances  of  Jesus  on  more  days,  since  the  apos 
tles  would  not  all  have  been  absent  and  all  present 
at  precisely  the  same  time. 

The  scientific  method  can  no  more  be  ignored  or 
disputed  than  can  the  multiplication  table.  It  is  as 
old  as  the  reason  of  man  and  is  fallible  only  as  man's 
reason  is  fallible.  It  cannot  be  applied  to  matters  of 
religious  faith,  because  we  here  enter  a  region  where 
proof  or  verification  is  not  possible. 

in 

In  the  ancient  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi  lay  a 
stone,  the  Omphalos,  or  navel  stone,  supposed  to 
mark  the  centre  of  the  earth.  And  sure  enough,  it 
did  mark  the  centre  of  the  earth,  though  not  exactly 
under  the  conditions  the  ancients  believed.  The 
ancients  supposed  the  earth  had  one  centre,  like  a 
plane  or  any  irregular  surface,  or  as  the  navel  is  the 


184  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

centre  of  the  body  ;  but  we  know  now  that  the  earth 
is  a  sphere,  and  that  any  point  upon  its  surface  may 
serve  as  its  centre.  In  like  manner  every  religion 
thinks  itself  the  one  final  and  supreme  religion,  — 
thinks  itself  the  centre  of  the  world ;  and  for  that 
race  and  that  people  it  is  the  centre  of  the  world ; 
their  life,  their  history,  their  development,  hinges 
upon  it.  Our  navel  stone,  Christianity,  is  the  centre 
of  the  world  for  us,  and  the  Buddhist's,  the  Moham 
medan's,  is  the  centre  of  the  world  for  him.  The 
religion  of  Apollo  was  the  central  fact  in  the  history 
of  Greece.  There  may  be  any  number  of  true 
though  opposing  and  contradictory  religions.  There 
may  be  any  number  of  centres  to  the  infinite.  Math 
ematics,  the  exact  sciences,  are  always  and  every 
where  the  same,  but  religion  is  a  sentiment,  and  the 
forms  in  which  it  clothes  itself  are  as  various,  as 
changeable,  as  fleeting,  as  the  forms  of  summer 
clouds. 

IV 

The  whole  order  of  the  universe  favors  virtue  and 
is  against  vice.  Things  have  come  to  what  they  are, 
man  has  arrived  at  what  he  is,  the  grass  and  flowers 
clothe  the  fields,  the  trees  thrive  and  bear  wholesome 
fruit,  the  air  is  sweet,  and  water  quenches  thirst 
through  the  action  of  the  same  principles  by  which 
we  see  that  virtue  is  good  and  vice  bad.  Things 
have  clashed  and  warred  and  devoured  each  other 
through  past  eternities,  and  out  of  the  final  adjust 
ment,  the  balance  at  which  they  have  at  last  arrived, 


MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS  185 

we  see  that  virtue  is  to  be  sought  and  vice  to  be 
shunned ;  we  see  that  a  good  man's  life  is  the  fruit 
of  the  same  balance  and  proportion  as  that  which 
makes  the  fields  green  and  the  corn  ripen.  It  is 
not  by  some  fortuitous  circumstance,  the  especial 
favor  of  some  god,  but  by  living  in  harmony  with 
immutable  laws  through  which  the  organic  world 
has  been  evolved,  that  he  is  what  he  is. 


To  say  that  the  world  or  the  order  of  nature  is 
reasonable  is  like  saying  how  well  the  body  fits  the 
skin.  The  order  of  nature  fits  our  faculties  and 
appears  reasonable  to  us,  not  because  it  is  shaped  to 
them,  but  because  they  are  shaped  to  it,  just  as  the 
eye  is  shaped  to  the  light  or  the  ear  to  the  waves  of 
sound.  Nature  is  first  and  man  last.  Things  are 
good  to  us  because  our  constitutions  are  shaped  to 
them  ;  no  absolute  goodness  is  argued.  Fluids  might 
seem  like  solids  to  beings  differently  constituted. 
Were  the  laws  of  the  physical  world  designed  to 
bring  about  certain  results,  or  do  the  results  simply 
follow  ?  Shall  we  say  that  the  inclination  of  the 
earth's  axis  to  the  plane  of  its  orbit  is  in  order  that 
there  may  be  a  change  of  season  ?  or  does  the  change 
of  the  season  simply  follow  as  an  inevitable  conse 
quence  ?  Is  the  air  adapted  to  the  lungs  or  the 
lungs  to  the  air  ?  Of  course  the  lesser  or  secondary 
fact  is  always  adjusted  to  the  greater  or  primary  fact. 
The  structure  of  a  bird,  the  mechanism  of  its  wings 
and  feathers,  etc.,  is  all  adapted  with  the  nicest  accu- 


186  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

racy  to  the  one  purpose  of  flying,  but  is  there  any 
thing  here  we  can  properly  call  design  ?  The  wing 
we  know  is  the  result  of  slow  adaptation  and  modifi 
cation,  and  not  of  anything  like  deliberate  contrivance. 
God  did  not  will  that  certain  creatures  should  fly, 
and  so  proceed  to  make  them  wings  and  feathers. 
With  disuse  the  wing  disappears  or  becomes  rudimen 
tary.  Use  therefore  makes  the  wing.  What  makes 
use  ?  Some  mysterious  impulse  imprinted  upon  the 
organization  of  which  we  know  nothing.  What  I  am 
trying  to  say  is,  there  is  nothing  like  man's  ways, 
nothing  artificial  in  nature  —  nothing  in  the  finite 
that  is  copied  from  the  infinite.  Will,  design,  pur 
pose,  are  partial  terms.  God  is  all  will,  all  pur 
pose,  just  as  the  sphere  is  all  form,  that  is,  holds  all 
form,  and  yet  is  of  itself  of  no  form !  The  circle 
goes  in  all  directions,  and  yet  in  no  direction. 

VI 

Christianity  amounts  to  little  without  something 
to  back  it  up,  without  integrity  of  character  and 
fealty  to  truth.  You  may  put  on  a  varnish  of  reli 
gion  as  thick  as  you  please.  If  the  stuff  beneath  is 
poor,  is  shaky  or  full  of  knots,  the  result  is  poor.  Our 
final  reliance  is  always  upon  the  man  himself  and  not 
upon  his  creed.  We  care  little  what  he  believes  or 
disbelieves,  so  that  he  believes  in  sobriety,  justice, 
charity,  and  the  imperativeness  of  duty,  so  that  he 
speak  the  truth  and  shame  the  devil,  and  I  reckon  it 
is  about  so  with  God  himself.  What  mankind  in 
their  better  selves  love  can  hardly  fail  to  be  accept- 


MEDITATIONS   AND  CRITICISMS  187 

able  to  him.  Atheism  itself,  if  sincere  and  honest,  is 
more  in  keeping  with  the  order  of  the  world  than  a 
cowardly  and  lukewarm  deism.  Belief  in  Christ  will 
not  save  a  man ;  he  must  be  saved  already  or  he  is 
lost,  —  saved  by  his  character  and  conscience,  or  there 
is  no  material  for  belief  in  Christ  to  work  upon. 
How  many  people  we  see  who  freely  and  heartily 
subscribe  to  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles,  yet  in  whom 
we  have  no  confidence,  and  with  whom  we  want  no 
intimate  relations.  And  it  is  not  because  they  are 
hypocrites  ;  it  is  because  they  are  incapable  of  truth 
fulness  or  manliness. 

Belief  is  not  saving,  but  character  is.  How  shall 
we  get  character  ?  then,  how  deepen  and  fertilize 
the  groundwork  of  men's  natures  ?  It  cannot  be 
clone  in  a  moment ;  conversion  will  not  do  it. 
When  a  man  of  force  and  integrity  joins  the  church, 
the  church  has  an  acquisition  ;  but  when  a  slippery, 
inconstant,  and  equivocating  person  joins  it,  it  has 
put  a  brick  in  its  walls  that  will  not  stand  the 
weather.  The  frosts  and  the  rains  will  crumble  it, 
and  the  structure  be  weakened. 

Character  is  of  slow  growth.  It  cannot  be  made 
to  order.  The  most  that  can  be  done  to  encour 
age  or  stimulate  it  is  to  lay  the  emphasis  where  it 
belongs  ;  to  insist  upon  things  that  are  essential ; 
to  stop  trying  to  convert  men  to  a  creed,  but  to 
open  their  eyes  to  a  law ;  show  them  the  penalties  of 
fickleness,  falsehood,  intemperance,  unchastity,  riot 
ous  living,  etc.,  not  because  they  contravene  some 
command  or  precept  of  the  Bible,  or  because  they 


188  THE    LIGHT   OF   DAY 

endanger  their  chances  of  felicity  in  some  other 
world,  but  because  they  contravene  the  laws  through 
which  all  growth  and  health  and  wholeness  come, 
and  endanger  their  well-being  here  and  now. 

The  preacher  cannot  create  force  and  integrity  off 
hand  in  his  hearer  by  praising  force  and  integrity,  but 
a  great  deal  is  gained  when  a  love  for  these  things 
is  awakened.  Men  are  made  manly  by  an  appeal 
to  their  manliness  ;  noble  sentiments  are  begotten 
by  noble  sentiments  ;  when  the  true  patriot  speaks, 
everybody  is  patriotic  ;  when  the  real  Christian  ap 
pears,  everybody  loves  Christianity.  I  once  heard 
Fred  Douglass  say  the  way  to  keep  a  man  out  of  the 
mud  was  to  black  his  boots,  and  the  first  step 
towards  making  a  man  manly  is  to  convince  him  he 
has  a  capacity  for  manliness.  Show  him  that  reli 
gion  is  not  some  far-away  thing  that  he  must  get, 
but  a  vital  truth  which  he  lives  whenever  he  does  a 
worthy  thing. 

Religion,  as  something  special  and  extra,  which  a 
man  may  or  may  not  have,  and  which  is  attached 
to  certain  beliefs  and  ceremonies,  has  had  its  day. 
Whatever  it  may  have  been  in  the  past,  it  is  no 
longer  a  power  to  mould  men's  characters  and  shape 
their  lives.  That  a  man  professes  religion  is  no 
longer  a  recommendation  to  him,  in  applying  for  any 
place  in  the  business  or  political  world.  It  does 
not  inspire  any  more  confidence  in  him  as  a  man  or 
as  a  trusted  servant,  but  creates  a  certain  presump 
tion  against  him.  He  may  be  a  wolf  in  sheep's 
clothing  ;  watch  him  closely.  A  commonplace  poet 


MEDITATIONS    AND    CRITICISMS  189 

derives  great  advantages  from  the  stock  forms  and 
measures  which  he  uses ;  these  are  the  garments  of 
mighty  bards  ;  let  him  discard  them,  and  his  little 
ness  and  poverty  will  appear.  So  a  man  often  hides 
his  mean  and  selfish  nature  in  loud  professions  of 
religion  ;  let  him  drop  these  and  stand  upon  his  own 
merits,  and  we  shall  not  be  imposed  upon.  When 
such  an  one  fails  we  excuse  the  matter  by  saying, 
"  Well,  it  was  not  the  fault  of  the  religion,  but  of 
the  man."  The  fault  is  in  attaching  any  religious 
value  to  forms  and  beliefs  —  in  having  any  cloaks 
of  this  kind  in  which  a  scoundrel  may  masquer 
ade. 

If  a  man  professes  to  be  a  legal  or  medical  or  sci 
entific  expert,  and  is  not,  he  is  soon  found  out.  This 
is  not  a  cloak,  but  a  sword,  and  if  he  cannot  wield 
it,  he  is  soon  exposed.  But  a  man  may  profess 
Christianity  to-day  and  rob  a  bank  to-morrow. 

Probably  no  honest  mind  ever  gave  its  assent  to 
the  literal  truth  of  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles,  or  to 
any  of  the  various  creeds,  until  its  sympathy  and  its 
interest  had  been  brought  over  by  an  appeal  to  the 
emotions.  The  creed  is  an  after-thought ;  it  is  the 
terms  which  the  conscience  makes  with  the  reason 
after  the  reason  has  surrendered.  In  assenting  to 
it  the  convert  thinks  he  is  only  assenting  to  the 
truth  of  his  religion,  or  to  the  genuineness  of  the 
emotion  he  has  experienced.  Mayhap  by  and  by, 
when  he  discovers  that  he  has  assented  to  a  set  of 
propositions  which,  standing  naked  and  formal  as 
they  do,  are  divested  of  the  spiritual  warmth  and 


190  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

magneti&m,  and  the  incentives  to  noble  and  heroic 
living  which  they  had  in  the  fervid  exhortations  of 
Paul,  or  in  the  calm  sweetness  of  James,  and  which 
his  reason  alone  is  now  to  lay  hold  of,  he  is  shocked 
and  repelled,  and  is  in  danger  of  losing  all  his  reli 
gion  with  the  discovery  of  the  unreasonableness  of  his 
creed.  This  is  unfortunate,  because  the  only  thing 
real  and  valuable  in  religion,  the  only  thing  saving 
in  it,  is  the  emotion  of  Godliness,  of  tenderness,  gen 
tleness,  purity,  mercy,  truth.  Without  these,  reli 
gion  is  nothing  but  a  name,  and  with  them  the  assent 
of  the  understanding  to  a  lot  of  formal  propositions 
about  the  plans  and  purposes  of  the  Eternal,  about 
the  trinity,  or  the  atonement,  or  original  sin,  etc., 
has  nothing  to  do.  There  is  no  connection  between 
these  things.  Religion  is  not  a  matter  of  reason  or 
of  belief  any  more  than  poetry  is. 

VII 

A  tree  is  known  by  its  fruit,  and  it  may  be  ob 
jected  that  false  ideas  in  religion  cannot  be  produc 
tive  of  good.  But  false  ideas  are  and  have  been 
productive  of  good.  The  idea  of  sacrifice  is  now 
looked  upon  as  a  false  idea,  and  has  long  been 
dropped  from  religious  rites,  but  with  the  ancients 
it  was  not  a  false  idea,  but  an  undoubted  means  of 
obtaining  immediate  communion  with  the  life  of  the 
gods.  The  man  who  offered  sacrifices  was  for  the 
time  being  a  guest  of  supernatural  beings,  and  he 
aimed  to  make  himself  worthy  to  sit  at  their  table. 
The  fruit  or  animals  offered  up  must  be  without 


MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS  191 

spot  or  blemish,  and  the  body  of  the  priest  who  of 
fered  it  was  to  be  without  blemish.  Can  there  be 
any  doubt  but  that  a  man's  religious  nature,  his 
sense  of  sacred  and  invisible  things,  was  quickened 
by  such  a  ceremony  ?  Before  the  victim  was 
slaughtered  wine  was  thrown  upon  its  head,  that  it 
might  nod  in  token  of  consent.  This,  too,  was  a 
false  idea,  since  any  strange  liquid  thrown  upon  the 
head  of  a  sheep  or  heifer,  and  allowed  to  run  down 
upon  the  nose  and  into  the  mouth,  will  cause  the 
animal  to  toss  its  head,  as  if  in  affirmation  ;  but  this 
only  served  to  clinch  the  belief  of  the  sacrificer  in 
the  immediate  presence  of  the  God. 

If  one  could  only  believe  that  the  stars  were  so 
many  eyes  of  supernatural  beings  looking  down  upon 
him,  and  beholding  his  every  act,  would  he  not  be 
more  careful  about  doing  a  mean  thing  beneath 
them  ?  Yet  such  an  idea  would  not  be  good  as 
tronomy.  History  is  full  of  false  or  foolish  ideas 
that  have  been  productive  of  great  good.  In  our 
day  we  should  look  upon  an  enthusiasm  like  that 
which  gave  rise  to  the  Crusades  as  very  absurd ;  the 
notion  that  was  the  parent  of  this  great  movement 
was  undoubtedly  a  mistaken  one,  and  yet  it  is  con 
sidered  that  the  Crusades  were  a  good  thing  for 
Europe.  Such  a  mighty  impulse  of  generosity  and 
devotion  to  an  idea  could  not  be  otherwise  than 
good.  "  He  maketh  the  wrath  of  man  to  praise 
him,"  and  the  folly  of  man,  too.  Whatever  creates 
a  noble  impulse  or  quickens  our  sense  of  the  imma 
nence  of  spiritual  and  invisible  things  is  justified 


192  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

by  its  results,  no  matter  how  false  or  delusive,  in 
itself,  it  may  be. 

The  religious  world  of  to-day  looks  upon  polythe 
ism  as  a  false  religion,  and  relatively  to  us  and  our 
ideas  it  is  false.  We  could  riot  be  sincere  in  the 
practice  of  it.  But  was  it  so  to  the  Greek  ?  Un 
doubtedly  the  religion  of  Apollo  has  done  as  much 
for  the  Hellenes,  some  might  say  more  than  Chris 
tianity  has  done  for  the  modern  world.  The  whole 
culture  and  civilization  of  Greece  was  the  legiti 
mate  outgrowth  of  the  religion  of  Apollo.  Can  as 
much  be  said  of  our  civilization  with  reference  to 
Christianity  ?  Grant  that  the  oracle  of  Delphi 
was  not  what  it  pretended  to  be,  but  its  answers 
were  founded  upon  the  widest  knowledge  and  the 
deepest  wisdom  possible  in  those  times.  As  a  rule, 
it  discouraged  unworthy  and  encouraged  worthy 
undertakings.  Moreover,  Dr.  Curtius  says,  "  The 
oracles  were  sought  only  by  those  who  were  in 
wardly  or  outwardly  oppressed  and  needy  of  help, 
especially  by  those  burdened  by  guilt.  The  atone 
ment  sought  from  the  priest  could  not  be  obtained 
without  humiliation  and  self-abasement.  Confession 
of  sin  and  repentance  were  demanded."  Delphi 
was  the  heart  and  conscience  of  Greece. 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  a  power  for  good  the  ordi 
nance  of  Christian  baptism  may  have  upon  him  who 
thoroughly  believes  in  it.  If,  when  the  neophyte 
feels  the  water  close  over  him,  he  really  believes  his 
sins  are  washed  away  and  he  is  cleansed  from  all 
impurities,  will  he  not  arise  a  different  man,  a  bet- 


MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS  193 

ter,  a  holier  man  ?  The  great  point  is  to  have 
faith.  Truly  faith  can  work  wonders.  The  early 
Christians,  the  apostles,  and  probably  Christ  him 
self  labored  under  the  delusion  that  the  end  of 
the  world  was  near  at  hand.  It  was  a  false  idea, 
but  it  added  solemnity  and  power  to  their  lives. 
"  As  long  as  this  error,"  says  Gibbon,  "  was  per 
mitted  to  subsist  in  the  church,  it  was  productive  of 
the  most  salutary  effects  on  the  faith  and  practice  of 
Christians,  who  lived  in  the  awful  expectation  of 
that  moment  when  the  globe  itself  and  all  the  vari 
ous  races  of  mankind  should  tremble  at  the  approach 
of  their  divine  Judge." 

VIII 

It  is  easy  enough  to  say  what  God  is  not,  buty 
ah  !  who  can  say  what  he  is  ?  Can  he  be  named  or 
denned  to  the  intellect  at  all  ?  Probably  not.  The 
burden  of  the  old  prophets'  songs  was  that  God  is 
past  finding  out,  —  past  finding  out  by  the  intellect, 
by  the  understanding.  We  call  him  an  infinite  and 
eternal  Being,  but  in  doing  so  we  commit  a  solecism, 
we  trip  up  our  own  minds.  The  only  notion  of  be 
ing  we  can  form  is  derived  from  our  knowledge  of 
man  ;  God  as  a  being  is  only  an  enlarged  man,  and 
to  make  him  infinite  and  eternal  is  to  contradict 
the  fundamental  idea  with  which  we  start.  A  be 
ing  is  finite  ;  add  infinity  and  omnipotence,  and  all 
idea  of  being  disappears.  Can  we  conceive  of  an 
infinite  house  or  of  an  infinite  inclosure  of  any 
kind  ?  No  more  can  we  conceive  of  an  infinite  be- 


194  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

ing.     Can  we  ascribe  form  to  infinite  space  ?     No 
more  can  we  ascribe  personality  to  God. 

What  appears  more  real  than  the  sky  ?  We 
think  of  it  and  speak  of  it  as  if  it  was  as  positive 
and  tangible  a  fact  as  the  earth.  See  how  it  is 
painted  by  the  sunset  or  by  the  sunrise.  How  blue 
it  is  by  day,  how  gemmed  by  stars  at  night.  At  one 
time  tender  and  wooing,  at  another  hard  and  dis 
tant.  Yet  what  an  illusion  !  There  is  no  sky  ;  it 
is  only  vacancy,  only  empty  space.  It  is  a  glimpse 
of  the  infinite.  When  we  try  to  grasp  or  measure 
or  define  the  Power  we  call  God,  we  find  it  to  be 
another  sky,  sheltering,  over-arching,  all-embracing, 
—  palpable  to  the  casual  eye,  but  receding,  vanish 
ing  to  the  closer  search  ;  unfathomable  because  in 
tangible, —  the  vast  power,  or  ether,  in  which  the 
worlds  float,  —  but  itself  ungraspable,  unattainable, 
forever  soaring  beyond  our  ken.  Not  a  being,  not 
an  entity  is  God,  but  that  which  lies  back  of  all 
being  and  all  entities.  Hence  an  old  writer,  in 
his  despair  of  grasping  God,  said,  "  God  may  not 
improperly  be  called  nothing."  Absolute  being  is 
to  the  human  mind  about  the  same  as  nothing,  or 
no  being  at  all,  just  as  absolute  motion  is  equivalent 
to  eternal  rest,  or  as  infinite  space  means  no  space 
at  all.  Motion  implies  something  which  is  not  mo 
tion,  and  space  implies  lines  and  boundaries.  In 
finite  being  or  power  gives  the  mind  no  place  to 
rest.  One's  thought  goes  forth  like  the  dove  from 
Noah's  ark  and  finds  nowhere  to  perch. 

"  How  can  any  one  teach  concerning  Brahma  ? 


MEDITATIONS  AND   CRITICISMS  195 

he  is  neither  the  known  nor  the  unknown.  That 
which  cannot  be  expressed  by  words,  but  through 
which  all  expression  comes,  this  I  know  to  be 
Brahma.  That  which  cannot  be  thought  by  the 
mind,  but  by  which  all  thinking  comes,  this  I  know 
is  Brahma.  That  which  cannot  be  seen  by  the  eye, 
but  by  which  the  eye  sees,  is  Brahma.  If  thou 
thinkest  that  thou  canst  know  it,  then  in  truth  thou 
knowest  it  very  little.  To  whom  it  is  unknown  he 
knows  it,  but  to  whom  it  is  known  he  knows  it 
not." 

IX 

Science  is  rubbing  deeper  and  deeper  into  our 
minds  the  conviction  that  creation  is  a  unit,  that 
there  are  no  breadths  or  chasms,  that  knowledge  of 
one  thing  fits  in  with  the  knowledge  of  all  other 
things  and  is  a  ground  of  vantage  in  the  soul's  pro 
gress  in  all  directions.  The  more  active  a  man's 
scientific  faculties  are,  the  more  clear  ought  to  be 
his  view  of  the  grounds  of  faith ;  and  so  it  would 
be  if  the  grounds  of  faith  were  continuous  with  the 
grounds  of  the  rest  of  human  knowledge.  But  they 
are  not,  they  belong  to  another  order  of  things. 

Poetic  truth,  moral  truth,  and  all  other  subtle 
truths  are  spiritually  discerned  also ;  and  that  there 
is  any  other  spiritual  discernment  than  is  here  im 
plied,  any  other  that  is  normal  in  kind  and  valid 
in  reason,  is  what  the  natural  man  cannot  admit. 
Spiritual  discernment  of  the  kind  here  referred  to 
can  be  communicated,  proof  of  it  can  be  given.  A 


196  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

man  cannot  counterfeit  any  real  intellectual  quality 
or  any  real  power  of  the  spirit,  but  the  spiritual 
discernment  of  evangelical  theology  cannot  be  com 
municated  or  verified.  A  man  says  he  has  it,  and 
that  is  all  we  can  know  about  it.  He  says  he  dis 
cerns  certain  things  to  be  true,  but  he  cannot  convey 
his  mode  of  viewing  them  to  us,  so  that  we  shall 
see  them  to  be  true  also.  Of  course  a  man  who  has 
no  faculty  for  music  cannot  appreciate  the  charm  or 
the  truth  of  music.  No,  but  those  who  have  this 
gift  can  give  us  proof  of  it. 

St.  Paul's  power  of  spiritual  discernment  was  no 
different  in  kind  from  that  of  many  other  men  be 
fore  and  since  his  time.  How  did  it  differ  from 
Carlyle's  power  of  spiritual  discernment,  or  from 
Schiller's,  or  from  Plato's,  or  from  that  of  Epictetus  ? 
He  had  no  deeper  insight  into  human  nature  or  into 
the  workings  of  men's  minds  or  into  the  mysteries 
that  shroud  human  life.  He  had  great  religious 
power,  great  heroism,  great  wisdom,  a  lofty  spiritual 
nature,  but  it  was  genetically  the  same  as  that  of 
other  men.  Milton  did  not  write  his  poems  out  of 
his  Puritanism,  out  of  the  kind  of  spiritual  know 
ledge  Puritans  are  supposed  to  possess.  Words 
worth  wrote  out  of  the  spirit  of  his  natural  religion, 
not  out  of  his  orthodoxy,  or  ?/?matural  religion. 

Indeed,  when  people  have  written  poetry  or  com 
posed  any  other  work  of  art  out  of  what  they  have 
called  their  spiritual  life  alone,  the  product  has  not 
been  such  as  the  world  wanted  to  see  live.  In  any 
work  of  prose  or  verse,  of  science  or  philosophy,  it  is 


MEDITATIONS  AND   CRITICISMS  197 

only  such  things  as  put  us  in  communication  with  the 
natural,  universal,  and  perennial  that  gives  the  work 
a  lasting  value.  Things  that  appeal  to  Christians 
alone  are  soon  left  behind.  The  natural  man,  as 
much  as  we  may  profess  to  despise  him,  is  the  main 
stay  after  all  in  religion  as  well  as  in  science.  Reli 
gious  poetry,  as  such,  has  little  value.  In  fact,  the 
only  thing  that  will  keep  a  religious  book  at  all  is  the 
salt  of  the  natural  man.  If  this  has  lost  its  savor,  the 
work  is  shortlived.  It  keeps  the  Bible  itself  fresh  and 
makes  it  appeal  to  all  hearts.  What  does  the  world 
value  in  Cowper's  poetry  ?  His  discernment  of 
spiritual  truths,  or  rather  his  poetic  discernment 
of  natural  universal  truths  ?  The  religious  idolaters 
who  throw  themselves  under  the  wheels  of  Jugger 
naut,  or  offer  themselves  as  victims  at  the  altar  of 
sacrifice,  are  heroic,  without  doubt,  yet  the  world 
does  not  heed  and  does  not  remember  them,  but  it 
does  heed  and  remember  the  three  hundred  Spartans 
who  laid  down  their  lives  at  Thermopylae.  This 
appeals  to  and  shows  the  stuff  of  the  natural  man. 


"  In  our  early  days,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "  we 
fancy  that  the  leading  events  of  our  life,  and  the 
persons  who  are  going  to  play  an  important  part  in 
it,  will  make  their  entrance  to  the  sound  of  drums 
and  trumpets  ;  but  when,  in  old  age,  we  look  back 
we  find  that  they  all  came  in  quietly,  slipped  in,  as 
it  were,  by  the  side  door,  almost  unnoticed."  The 
great  men  of  a  race  or  people,  the  real  heroes  and 


198  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

saviours,  usually  come  upon  the  scene  quietly  and 
unknown.  They  do  not  even  know  themselves. 

The  remark  of  Schopenhauer  occurred  to  me  in 
thinking  of  the  advent  of  Jesus.  Nothing  could  be 
more  natural,  nothing  more  in  harmony  with  uni 
versal  experience,  than  his  coming,  and  his  life  as 
•we  may  read  it  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  There  was 
no  prodigy,  no  miracle,  no  sudden  apparition  of  a 
superhuman  being,  clothed  in  majesty  and  power, 
as  the  popular  expectation  indicated  there  would 
be,  but  the  Messiah  came  in  the  natural  way  as  a 
helpless  infant,  born  of  human  parents.  Instead  of 
a  throne,  there  was  a  humble  cradle  in  a  manger. 

It  really  enhances  our  notion  of  his  merit,  or  if 
you  prefer  of  his  divinity,  that  he  should  have  been 
rejected  by  his  race  and  people,  that  he  should  have 
come  from  a  town  of  proverbial  disrepute,  that  he 
should  have  been  meek  and  lowly  through  life,  a 
man  of  sorrows,  the  friend  of  the  humble  and  the 
despised,  that  his  kingdom  should  not  have  been  of 
this  world  ;  in  fact,  that  he  should  in  every  way  have 
disappointed  expectation. 

All  this  seems  in  harmony  with  the  course  of  na 
ture  and  of  human  life.  It  agrees  with  the  truest 
experience.  There  is  a  sort  of  poetic  verisimilitude 
about  it.  Indeed,  if  a  God  were  to  appear  this  is 
probably  the  way  he  would  come.  All  greatest  things 
have  an  humble  beginning.  The  divine  is  nearer 
and  more  common  than  \ve  are  apt  to  think.  The 
earth  itself  is  a  star  in  the  sky,  little  as  we  may 
suspect  it. 


MEDITATIONS  AND  CRITICISMS  199 

Had  the  record  made  Jesus  suddenly  appear  as  a 
great  potentate,  or  even  as  a  full-grown  man,  as  the 
angels  are  represented  as  appearing,  or  had  it  repre 
sented  him  as  the  child  of  some  nymph,  like  certain 
other  heroes  of  antiquity,  the  fabulous  character  of  the 
story  would  have  been  apparent.  But  he  came  as  a 
man,  lived  as  a  man,  and  died  as  a  man ;  was  indeed 
completely  immersed  in  our  common  humanity.  No 
thing  God-like  but  his  teachings.  Even  the  reputed 
miracles  become  him  not ;  they  mar  his  perfect  hu 
manity.  They  belong  to  the  conception  of  him  as 
a  supernatural  being,  and  not  as  a  man.  The  notion 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception  also  jars  upon  our 
sense  of  the  human  completeness  of  his  character. 
He  came  as  the  great  saviours  in  all  ages  have  come, 
and  was  rejected  and  denied  in  the  usual  way.  His 
lot  was  not  exceptional.  His  character  and  mission 
were  not  exceptional,  except  that  he  spoke  more  fully 
to  our  sense  of  the  divine  than  any  man  has  before 
spoken. 

XI 

I  have  often  asked  myself,  What  is  the  merit  of  the 
mingled  feeling  of  admiration  and  approval  which 
we  experience  toward  people  who  devoutly  hold  a 
religious  creed  in  the  truth  of  which  we  have  no 
confidence  ?  In  yonder  house  is  an  aged  woman 
slowly  dying  of  an  incurable  disease.  She  can  no 
longer  rise  from  her  bed,  or  even  move  herself  with 
out  help.  Her  son  has  come  from  the  far  West  to 
be  with  her  in  these  last  days  of  her  life.  Every 
morning  the  son  reads  a  chapter  from  the  Bible,  and 


200  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

the  old  Scotch  woman,  lying  there  on  her  back  in 
her  bed,  holds  the  accustomed  family  prayers.  Her 
voice  is  low  and  feeble,  but  her  faith  is  strong,  her 
eye  is  bright,  and  her  spirit  serene.  Long  ago  she 
left  her  native  hills  for  this  new  country  ;  now  she  is 
about  to  leave  this  for  another  country  in  the  exist 
ence  of  which  beyond  that  dark  ocean  she  has  never 
had  the  slightest  doubt,  nor  the  slightest  doubt  as  to 
the  means  to  be  employed  to  secure  an  interest  there. 

What  is  the  merit  of  the  feeling  which  prompts 
us  to  say,  "  How  touching,  how  beautiful,"  and  that 
fills  us  with  a  vague  regret  that  such  a  faith  is  im 
possible  to  us  ?  We  could  not  feel  so  in  the  pre 
sence  of  the  ancient  superstitions,  the  bleeding  vic 
tims  on  the  altar,  or  the  devotee  perishing  in  the  arms 
of  his  idol.  Hence  our  feeling,  our  regret,  is  not 
a  tribute  to  sincerity  alone,  or  to  courage,  or  to 
heroism.  It  is  mainly  a  tribute  to  the  past,  to  the 
memory  of  our  fathers  who  held  this  faith,  to  our 
mothers  who  distilled  it  into  our  minds  in  infancy, 
to  the  old  creeds  and  institutions  which  have  played 
so  large  a  part  in  the  culture  and  development  of 
our  race. 

We  are  like  the  western  emigrant  turning  to  take 
a  last  view  of  the  home  of  his  youth  and  the  land  of 
his  fathers.  The  old  ties  draw  us,  we  are  filled  with 
a  deep  longing  and  regret ;  a  little  more  and  we 
would  go  back  and  abide  there  forever.  The  new 
world  of  faith,  the  great  western  world,  which  this 
generation  is  fast  entering,  and  which  the  next  gen 
eration  will  more  completely  take  possession  of,  is 


MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS  201 

indeed  a  new  land.  Those  upon  whom  the  old 
associations  have  set  the  deepest  mark  will  experi 
ence  the  keenest  homesickness.  The  timid,  the 
half-hearted,  the  irresolute,  will  not  go.  But  much 
of  the  best  blood  will  go,  is  going.  The  majority  of 
the  most  virile  minds  of  the  century  have  long  since 
taken  up  their  abode  there. 

And  like  the  other  emigration,  the  men  go  first ; 
the  women  and  children  stay  behind.  Woman,  more 
tender  and  emotional,  cannot  give  up  the  old  faiths ; 
she  shrinks  back  from  the  new  land ;  it  seems  cold 
and  naked  to  her  spirit ;  she  cleaves  unto  the  past, 
and  to  the  shelter  of  the  old  traditions.  Probably 
the  bravest  among  us  do  not  abandon  them  without 
a  pang.  The  old  church  has  a  friendly  and  shelter 
ing  look  after  all,  and  the  white  monuments  in  the 
rear  of  it  where  our  kindred  sleep  —  how  eloquent 
is  the  silent  appeal  which  they  make. 

But  what  can  be  done  ?  Thou  shalt  leave  this 
land,  the  land  of  thy  fathers,  is  a  fiat  which  has  gone 
forth  as  from  the  Eternal.  We  cannot  keep  the  old 
beliefs,  the  old  creeds,  if  we  would.  They  belonged 
to  a  condition  of  mind  which  is  fast  being  outgrown. 

XII 

The  old  theology  asks  us  to  believe  that  the  rela 
tions  between  God  and  man  were  radically  different 
at  some  former  period  of  history  than  now,  that  they 
were  more  intimate  and  personal.  Is  it  probable 
that  man's  relation  to  the  air,  the  water,  the  earth, 
has  ever  been  any  more  intimate  and  vital  than  now  ; 


202  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

that  his  food  ever  nourished  him  in  any  other  way 
than  it  does  now,  that  offspring  were  ever  begotten 
by  any  other  method,  or  that  the  relations  of  men  to 
each  other  were  ever  essentially  any  different  from 
the  present  ?  If  God  is  not  a  constant  and  invariable 
power  he  is  nothing.  Does  gravity  intermit  ?  Are 
not  the  celestial  bodies  always  on  time  ?  Are  not  life 
and  death  and  generation  always  subject  to  the  same 
laws  ?  The  moral  and  religious  nature  of  man  rises 
and  sinks ;  he  seems  more  conscious  of  God  and  of 
divine  things  in  some  period  of  history  than  in  others, 
in  some  races  than  in  others,  but  this  is  a  fluctuation 
doubtless  governed  by  natural  causes,  if  we  could 
penetrate  them,  and  is  not  the  result  of  any  change 
of  plan  or  purpose  of  the  Eternal.  God  walked  and 
talked  with  men  in  the  patriarchal  days,  because  men 
interpreted  their  own  thoughts,  dreams,  desires,  mo 
tions,  as  the  voice  of  God.  We  define  and  differen 
tiate  things  more  nowadays,  though  probably  the  old 
prophets  were  strictly  correct,  for  is  not  man  himself 
a  manifestation  of  God  ?  With  the  devout  and  re 
ligious  habit  of  mind  comes  the  boldness  to  ascribe 
all  our  thoughts  and  promptings  and  happenings  to 
God.  It  is  the  not-ourselves  that  rules  and  controls 
us  and  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being,  and  whether  we  call  it  God  or  by  any  other 
name  the  fact  remains  the  same.  The  religious 
mind  gives  it  one  name,  the  scientific  mind  another ; 
the  former  makes  it  personal  and  sustains  a  personal 
relation  to  it,  the  other  makes  it  impersonal  and 
names  it  law  or  force.  Indeed,  the  dispute  between 


MEDITATIONS   AND  CRITICISMS  203 

the  saint  and  the  scientist  is  not  as  to  a  matter  of 
fact,  but  as  to  a  matter  of  feeling.  One  reaches 
through  consciousness  what  the  other  reaches  through 
intellect,  and  the  results  differ  just  as  the  media 
differ.  There  are  fear,  love,  hope,  and  other  emotions 
mingled  with  the  one  experience,  but  there  are  none 
of  these  things  mingled  with  the  other.  Indeed, 
one  is  an  experience  while  the  other  is  a  rational 
process. 

XIII 

The  region  of  the  unconscious  in  one,  so  much 
more  deep  and  potent  in  some  men  than  in  others, 
is  our  hold  upon  the  Eternal.  The  disclosure  of 
thoughts,  of  knowledge,  of  power,  that  we  did  not 
know  we  possessed  —  these  things  may  be  said  to  be 
from  God.  The  Biblical  writers  ascribed  all  spon 
taneous  thoughts  to  God.  Such  were  a  revelation. 
When  these  men  looked  deep  into  their  hearts  they 
found  God  there  and  they  conversed  with  him  freely. 
What  we  call  communing  with  ourselves,  the  reli 
gious  mind  calls  communing  with  God.  Every  writer, 
every  orator,  knows  what  it  is  to  see  depths  and  views 
open  in  his  mind  that  are  a  surprise  to  him,  and  that 
but  a  moment  before  he  was  ignorant  of.  This  is 
inspiration.  All  scriptures  are  given  by  inspiration, 
because  they  come  not  by  way  of  the  reason  and  the 
understanding,  but  by  way  of  the  conscience  and  the 
spiritual  sense  ;  all  poetry  the  same.  We  call  it 
God  or  we  call  it  genius,  just  according  to  our  train 
ing  and  habit  of  mind.  The  mind  does  open  some- 


204  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

times  and  refuses  to  open  at  others.  Undoubtedly 
a  man  has  or  has  not  a  capacity  for  great  and  high 
thoughts.  How  the  thoughts  arise  is  as  great  a 
mystery  to  him  as  to  another.  In  our  speech  of  to 
day  we  do  not  ascribe  these  things  to  God  —  to  any 
objective  agency  or  power  external  to  ourselves ;  it 
is  a  purely  subjective  phenomenon,  as  much  so  as 
the  seeing  of  visions  or  the  dreaming  of  dreams. 
Mohammed  thought  he  saw  and  talked  with  Gabriel 
and  once  with  God ;  St.  Paul  believed  he  heard  a 
voice  and  saw  a  light  from  heaven  :  we  call  these 
tilings  mental  hallucinations,  the  man's  own  con 
science  or  fears  or  hopes  or  thoughts  seen  externally  ; 
but  they  were  as  real  to  them  as  any  outward  object. 
All  that  lies  back  of  our  conscious  powers,  all  the 
not  me,  the  pious  soul  calls  God.  And  indeed  how 
little  we  are  in  and  of  ourselves.  Look  at  yonder 
water  wheel  doing  its  work.  All  the  not  me  in  that 
case  is  the  water  that  flows,  and  gravity  that  makes 
it  flow,  and  without  them  the  wheel  is  nothing.  In 
our  own  case  we  draw  quite  as  largely  upon  the  uni 
versal,  upon  that  which  is  not  ourselves.  Call  all 
the  not  me  God  and  we  have  some  idea  of  the  close 
ness  and  immanence  of  God  to  the  old  Hebrew  pro 
phet.  Science  shows  all  this  not  me  to  be  imper 
sonal  force  ;  it  shows  how  much  of  it  is  race  or 
family  or  climate  or  environment  or  physiology 
or  geology;  how  the  mind  itself  is  a  part  of  the 
body ;  how  the  conscience  itself  arose,  how  the 
church,  the  state,  and  all  institutions.  A  certain 
order  of  minds  stamps  this  force  with  personality. 


MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS  205 

All  the  early  minds  did,  but  science  leads  us  farther 
and  farther  away  from  an  anthropomorphic  God. 
It  is  singular  that  we  should  have  outgrown  anthro 
pomorphism  so  far  as  to  deny  personality  to  the 
separate  forces  of  nature,  but  ascribe  it  to  nature  as  a 
whole. 

XIV 

The  view  which  the  old  theology  takes  is  an  arti 
ficial  view.  It  imposes  upon  the  world  arbitrary  and 
artificial  conditions  as  if  one  were  to  paint  the  grass 
blue  and  the  sky  green.  It  says  the  world  is  a  lost 
and  condemned  world  ;  that  God  is  estranged  from 
the  race  of  man  ;  that  through  some  act  of  disobedi 
ence  of  Adam  six  thousand  or  more  years  ago,  sin  and 
death  entered  the  world,  and  that  a  way  of  escape 
from  eternal  ruin  has  been  provided  for  mankind  by 
the  life  and  ignominious  death  of  an  innocent  and 
just  person,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  etc.  This  I  say  is 
an  artificial  view,  an  utterly  unscientific  view,  —  as 
much  so  as  the  belief  not  so  very  old  that  witches 
could  cause  storms  and  tempests,  or  as  the  view  of 
Justin  Martyr  that  the  earth  becomes  fertile  when 
dug  by  a  spade  because  the  spade  is  in  the  form  of 
a  cross. 

Theology  looks  upon  sin  as  something  entirely  apart 
from  a  man's  natural  defects,  and  upon  religion  as 
something  entirely  independent  of  his  good  qualities. 
Both  are  from  without,  —  one  the  work  of  a  malignant 
spirit,  the  other  the  gift  of  a  good  spirit,  but  both 
arbitrary  or  mechanical,  and  in  no  way  related  to  the 


206  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

ordinary  course  of  nature.  How  different  the  natural 
or  scientific  view  !  When  we  look  upon  the  world 
with  the  eye  of  a  philosopher  we  see  that  it  is  in 
deed  the  theatre  of  opposite  and  contending  forces, 
but  that  the  good,  that  is  the  good  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  best  interest  of  the  race,  is  slowly 
triumphing.  We  see  the  race  struggling  up  into  a 
higher  and  better  life ;  the  long,  dark,  and  devious 
route  which  man  has  come  is  disclosed,  but  his  evolu 
tion  has  gone  steadily  forward.  We  do  not  find  sin, 
in  the  theological  sense.  We  see  defects  and  imper 
fections,  we  see  vice  and  disease,  the  ends  of  nature 
crossed  and  thwarted,  but  no  more  and  no  differently 
in  the  case  of  man  than  in  the  case  of  the  animals  and 
plants.  We  see,  in  fact,  that  death  is  everywhere  the 
condition  of  life.  We  do  not  find  that  the  theologi 
cal  system  takes  hold  of  fact  as  reality  at  any  point. 
It  is  a  matter  entirely  extraneous,  or  apart  from  the 
laws  and  condition  of  things.  There  is  no  place  for 
the  scheme  of  redemption.  It  looks  just  as  artificial 
as  the  Ptolemaic  system  of  astronomy.  It  is  an  in 
vention  of  theology.  On  our  maps  we  paint  the 
different  states  and  countries  different  colors  and 
make  the  boundaries  very  prominent,  but  in  nature 
we  know  these  things  are  not  thus  differentiated. 
The  different  climates  are  not  thus  sharply  separated  ; 
neither  are  day  and  night  divided  by  right  lines. 
But  our  theology  is  as  artificial  as  our  maps  or  as 
our  division  of  time. 

How  easy  to  see  that  these  systems  have  come 
down  to  us  from  an  entirely  different  state  of  things, 


MEDITATIONS   AND   CRITICISMS  207 

an  entirely  different  condition  of  mind,  from  that 
which  prevails  to-day  ;  a  state  of  mind  which  viewed 
all  things  externally,  in  an  arbitrary  and  artificial 
light,  which  looked  upon  nature  as  the  theatre  of 
strife  between  beneficent  and  malignant  spirits, 
which  saw  satanic  agencies  everywhere  active,  which 
saw  all  forces  as  supernatural  forces,  which  begat  a 
belief  in  magic,  divination,  alchemy,  astrology,  witch 
craft,  which  believed  an  jDld  woman  could  turn  her 
self  into  a  wolf  and  devour  flocks  of  sheep,  wrhich 
looked  upon  an  eclipse  or  a  comet,  not  as  a  natural 
event,  but  as  a  supernatural.  Nearly  all  these  dark 
superstitions  have  perished ;  the  condition  of  mind 
that  begat  them  has  passed  away,  but  the  supersti 
tion  of  the  magic  of  Christ's  blood  and  all  those 
pagan  notions  of  heaven  and  hell  have  survived ; 
though  the  intense  realization  of  them  of  the  old 
days  of  witchcraft  is  fast  fading  out.  They  are 
coolly  held  as  intellectual  propositions,  and  that  is 
about  all.  The  light  of  science,  where  it  is  fully  ad 
mitted,  is  as  fatal  to  them  as  sun  to  mildew.  Science 
begets  a  habit  of  mind  in  which  these  artificial  notions 
cannot  live,  just  as  the  study  of  medicine  begets 
quite  a  different  theory  of  disease  from  that  of  the 
Indian  practitioner. 

The  study  of  nature  kills  all  belief  in  miraculous 
or  supernatural  agents,  not  because  it  proves  to  us 
that  these  things  do  not  exist,  but  because  it  fosters 
a  habit  of  mind  that  is  unfavorable  to  them,  because 
it  puts  us  in  possession  of  a  point  of  view  from 
which  they  disappear.  The  opposite  of  the  natural 


208  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

man  is  not  the  spiritual  man,  —  for  the  natural  man 
is  often  the  most  spiritual,  —  but  the  artificial 
man,  the  man  upon  whose  mind  has  been  foisted  an 
artificial  system  of  belief,  a  view  of  things,  a  view  not 
encouraged  by  nature,  but  in  opposition  to  nature. 

An  artificial  man,  a  man  to  whom  all  promptings 
of  nature  and  suggestions  of  reason  were  looked  upon 
as  the  whisperings  of  the  evil  one,  —  such  was  and 
still  is  the  good  old  orthodox  believer.  He  cherished 
an  artificial  system  of  belief,  a  system  which  attrib 
uted  curious  plans  and  devices  to  God  outside  of 
nature,  to  save  fallen  man  —  a  system  of  belief  the 
most  perfect  expression  of  which  is  found  in  the 
creed  and  elaborate  ritual  of  the  Catholic  church. 
All  the  other  churches  are  more  or  less  compromises 
with  nature,  with  the  natural  man.  They  concede 
some  rights  to  him,  the  right  of  private  judgment, 
the  most  precious  of  all.  But  the  Romish  church 
concedes  nothing ;  it  is  the  expression  of  absolute 
outward  authority  ;  it  is  as  arbitrary  and  unnatural 
as  anything  can  well  be  ;  it  is  the  complete  expres 
sion  of  a  church,  of  a  religious  organization,  of  a 
system  of  things  which  takes  a  man's  salvation  out 
of  his  own  hands  and  puts  it  into  the  hands  of  an 
ecclesiastical  hierarchy.  At  one  extreme  stands 
naturalism  or  science,  at  the  other  stands  the  Catho 
lic  church,  while  the  other  churches  occupy  inter 
mediate  grounds.  Indeed,  there  is  a  regular  gradation 
from  Rome  down  or  up  to  nature,  the  Anglican 
church  probably  standing  nearest  Rome,  and  the 
Unitarian  nearest  nature. 


MEDITATIONS  AND  CRITICISMS  209 

XV 

I  apprehend  that  the  success  of  Christianity  has 
not  been  owing  to  the  fact  that  it  is  true  as  a  sys 
tem  of  doctrines,  but  that  it  is  true  as  a  system  of 
ethics.  It  is  a  good  working  hypothesis.  It  re 
strains  vice,  it  stimulates  virtue.  The  doctrines  are 
false,  but  they  gave  force,  and,  as  it  were,  dramatic 
representation  to  the  ethics  ;  they  embodied  it  in 
living  concrete  form,  as  in  a  parable  or  allegory,  so 
that  they  have  a  new  power  over  men's  hearts  and 
minds.  But  always  have  the  doctrines  been  held  as 
primary,  and  the  ethics  as  secondary,  though  the  two 
were  inseparable.  The  orthodox  churches  to-day  set 
more  store  by  the  doctrines,  when  the  pinch  comes, 
than  by  the  ethics.  It  is  more  necessary  to  believe 
certain  things  than  to  be  a  certain  type  of  man,  to 
lead  a  certain  kind  of  life.  The  American  Board  of 
Foreign  Missions  refuse  certain  candidates  for  labor 
in  the  foreign  field  who  hold  an  extra  belief  in  the 
extent  of  God's  mercy  to  the  heathen.  If  you  be 
lieve  in  probation  after  death,  says  the  board,  you 
are  none  of  ours,  no  matter  what  your  daily  walk 
and  conversation  may  be. 

By  making  the  object  of  religion  some  other  world, 
some  other  state  of  existence  than  this,  a  great  lever 
age  seems  to  have  been  gained.  It  gave  room  for 
the  imagination  to  work,  for  the  ideal  to  play  a  part. 
The  enchantment  of  distance,  the  fascination  of  the 
unknown,  the  lure  of  the  absolutely  pure  and  per 
fect  (which  of  course  would  not  satisfy  us  when 


210  THE  LIGHT  OF  DAY 

attained,  any  more  than  their  opposite),  have  been 
great  helps  in  elevating  the  race.  The  conscience 
of  the  race  has  slowly  become  attuned  to  these  high 
promises  and  ideals.  The  present  life  is  vulgar  and 
mean,  and  to  a  large  part  of  mankind  seems  hardly 
worth  the  having.  The  world  of  which  we  form  a 
part  is  always  more  or  less  a  prosy  commonplace 
world ;  we  are  crushed  and  dwarfed  by  its  material 
ism  or  its  dull  cares.  Heaven  must  be  some  other 
world,  some  far-away  elysium  field.  This  hope,  this 
lure,  keeps  the  heart  from  failing.  That  this  "  poor 
life  is  all,"  how  such  a  conviction  would  cause  mil 
lions  of  souls  to  sink  back  into  the  slough  of  de 
spond  ;  because  this  life  is  poor  to  them,  they  have 
not  the  power  to  transform  it  and  see  it  shot  through 
with  celestial  laws.  This  earth  is  no  star  in  the 
heavens  to  them,  but  a  very  vulgar  and  prosaic  clod. 

The  question  to  be  asked  of  a  conclusion  of  science, 
is,  Is  it  true  or  false.  We  stand  before  a  people's  re 
ligion  with  the  inquiry,  Is  it  elevating,  is  it  saving  ? 
We  stand  before  poem  or  work  of  art  with  the  in 
quiry,  Is  it  beautiful,  is  it  inspiring?  We  stand 
before  a  question  of  politics  with  the  inquiry,  Is  it 
expedient,  is  it  conducive  to  the  best  interests  of 
the  country  ?  We  stand  before  a  question  of  morals 
with  the  inquiry,  Is  it  right,  is  it  good  ?  But  we 
always  stand  before  a  conclusion  of  science  with  the 
inquiry,  Is  it  true  ? 

Whether  or  not  the  Gospel  records  are  true  as 
history,  they  have  wonderful,  even  magical  power  as 
literature.  Their  certitude,  their  good  faith,  their 


MEDITATIONS   AND  CRITICISMS  211 

sweetness,  their  solemnity,  their  mysticism,  and  their 
aroma  of  the  sacred  and  divine  are  almost  irresist 
ible.  Only  very  strong  minds  or  else  very  dull 
ones  can  withstand  them.  A  spell  is  put  upon  the 
mind  of  the  reader,  and  his  logical  faculties  forget 
to  assert  themselves.  It  seems  as  if  these  things 
must  have  happened  just  as  the  Gospel  writers  put 
them  down,  —  as  if  the  whole  order  of  the  world,  and 
the  whole  relation  of  man  to  it,  and  of  God  to  man, 
must  have  been  entirely  different  in  those  days  from 
what  it  is  now.  It  is  a  glimpse  into  the  land  of 
poetry  and  fable.  We  escape  from  the  tyranny  of 
nature,  from  the  grossness  and  irreligion  of  the  actual 
world,  into  a  realm  where  all  is  plastic  and  beautiful 
and  satisfying.  Then  the  power  of  Christianity  to 
inspire  beautiful  and  disinterested  lives  —  is  it  not 
an  old  story,  do  we  not  know  it  well  ?  It  does  not 
offer  a  system  of  philosophy,  but  a  religious  incen 
tive. 

When  it  attempts  to  play  the  role  of  interpreter 
of  the  visible  order  of  the  universe,  its  failure  is  pa 
thetic  ;  its  proofs  are  childish  ;  its  science  is  essen 
tially  pagan ;  its  story  of  the  Fall  as  an  explanation 
of  the  origin  of  evil,  and  its  "  plan  of  salvation  "  as 
a  means  of  escape  from  this  evil,  as  science  does  not 
rise  above  any  of  the  pagan  conceptions  of  the  ra 
tionale  of  things. 


XV 

SPIRITUAL  INSIGHT   OF  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

~T  NOTE  that  one  of  our  religious  journals  looks 
-  upon  Matthew  Arnold  as  he  appears  in  his 
prose  writings  as  "  singularly  deficient  in  spiritual 
insight."  Unless  the  terms  are  used  in  some  special 
and  restricted  sense,  I  do  not  think  the  charge  quite 
just.  If  it  is  meant  that  he  was  not  eminently  a 
devout  nature,  a  sample  of  the  specialization  of  the 
spiritual  and  religious  faculties,  like  Newman  or 
Maurice  or  even  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  then  I  quite 
agree.  But  if  it  is  meant  that  he  was  deficient  in 
the  power  to  apprehend  the  value  and  importance 
of  invisible,  spiritual  things,  the  value  of  the  reli 
gious  sentiment  in  man,  that  he  had  not  a  clear, 
penetrating  vision  into  the  sources  of  the  spirit's 
wealth  and  strength,  that  he  was  not  moved  and 
attracted  by  the  good  as  well  as  by  the  beautiful, 
by  righteousness  as  well  as  by  lucidity,  then  I  pro 
test.  I  think  Arnold  must  be  classed  among  the  men 
who,  like  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Emerson, 
are  essentially  religious,  men  who  reach  and  move 
the  spirit  and  help  forward  the  higher  life  ;  less 
than  the  men  named  in  some  respects,  but  superior 
in  others,  —  superior  to  any  of  them  in  clearness  of 
vision,  in  power  to  see  things  exactly  as  they  are. 


SPIRITUAL   INSIGHT  OF  MATTHEW  ARNOLD      213 

The  great  army  of  literary  men  and  poets  are  worldly- 
minded  ;  whatever  else  they  satisfy,  they  do  not  sat 
isfy  our  religious  yearnings.  Who  would  say  that 
Chaucer  or  Spenser  or  Byron  or  Burns  or  Pope  had 
any  religious  value  ?  All  Arnold's  more  notable 
poems  sound  the  spirits -depths.  —His  mind  glows 
in  presence  of  the  great  facts  of  life,  death,  and 
eternity.  Its  yearning,  spiritual  aspiration,  and  pene 
trating  insight  are  remarkable.  It  is  the  soul  that 
feels  and  responds  to  them,  and  not  merely  the 
aesthetic  and  literary  faculty.  All  deep  spiritual- 
minded  men  feel 

.  .  .  "the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world." 

This  burdened  Matthew  Arnold's  soul,  but  it  never 
obscured  the  clearness  of  its  vision.  Does  our  re 
ligious  editor  deny  him  spiritual  insight  because  he 
refused  to  accept  the  miracles,  or  because  he  did  not 
penetrate  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity,  the  Atonement, 
original  sin,  and  other  enigmas  with  which  the  reli 
gious  world  has  burdened  itself  ?  Who  has  pene 
trated  these  mysteries  ?  Millions  of  pious  souls 
accept  them,  and  call  their  acceptance  an  under 
standing  of  them,  but  they  confuse  words.  These 
are  transcendent  mysteries  that  baffle  all  reason. 

It  is  true  that  in  his  prose  writings  Arnold  appears 
solely  as  the  critic,  the  divider  of  one  thing  from 
another.,  the  classifier.  He  is  cool,  clear,  disinter 
ested.  He  does  not  so  much  address  the  religious, 
emotional  nature  as  the  intelligence,  and  aims  to 
satisfy  that  craving  in  us  for  those  things  that  are 


214  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

true  and  excellent  in  and  of  themselves.  In  his 
religious  writings,  in  "  Literature  and  Dogma,"  "  God 
and  the  Bible,"  "  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism,"  Ar 
nold  is  still  the  critic,  the  diagnoser  ;  he  is  solely 
bent  on  seeing  things  just  as  they  are  ;  but  it  seems 
to  me  there  is  no  want  of  spiritual  insight,  unless 
we  narrow  the  term  so  that  it  means  seeing  the 
truth  of  some  particular  creed  or  dogma. 

When  we  examine  our  notions  closely,  it  is  very 
doubtful  if  what  is  called  spiritual  insight  differs 
from  any  other  true  insight,  —  the  power  to  pengj- 
trajte_jiitojbiddejxjorces  and  meanings,  to  get  ajMt^e 
of  things.  True7  the  logical,  rea 


soning  mind  differs  from  the  imaginative  poetic 
mind,  and  from  the  fervid  religious  mind  ;  but  is 
not  the  faculty  with  which  we  determine  the  truth 
or  falsity  of  a  proposition  the  same  in  all  cases  ?  A 
thing  cannot  be  false  to  the  intellect  and  true  to 
what  we  call  the  soul  or  the  heart,  nor  vice  versa. 
The  intellect  may  not  see  what  the  heart  feels,  but 
the  heart  is  blind,  and  the  mind  alone  can  supply 
it  with  eyes.  There  is  no  more  unsafe  guide  in  our 
search  for  the  truth  than  our  feelings  or  our  attrac 
tions  and  repulsions.  We  feel  so  and  so  about  a 
matter,  but  the  previous  question  is,  ought  we  to 
feel  so  and  so?  By  the  term  "spiritual  insight"  I 
suppose  we  commonly  mean  the  capacity  to  appre 
hend  spiritual  things,  or  those  things  that  are  related 
to  our  religious  needs  and  aspirations,  and  I  find  no 
clearer  or  fuller  recognition  of  these  things  than  in 
the  pages  of  Matthew  Arnold.  The  passage  in  one 


SPIRITUAL   INSIGHT  OF   MATTHEW   ARNOLD      215 

of  his  earlier  essays  from  Greek  poetry  sets  in  emo 
tional,  poetic  form  the  thought  which  is  at  the  hot- 
torn  of  all  his  religious  criticisms  and  teachings : 
"  0  !  that  my  lot  may  lead  me  in  the  path  of  holy 
innocence  of  word  and  deed,  the  path  which  august 
laws  ordain,  laws  that  in  the  highest  empyrean  had 
their  hirth,  of  which  Heaven  is  the  father  alone, 
neither  did  the  race  of  mortal  man  heget  them,  nor 
shall  oblivion  ever  put  them  to  sleep.  The  power 
of  God  is  mighty  in  them,  and  groweth  not  old." 

No  doubt  there  has  grown  up  in  the  church  a 
usage  which  assigns  to  the  terms  "  spiritual  insight," 
"  spiritual-mindedness,"  etc.,  a  narrow  and  exclusive 
meaning,  and  which  would  deny  them  to  all  persons 
who  do  not  accept  the  popular  view  of  Christianity, 
or  who  lived  in  the  pre-Christian  ages.  One  of  the 
most  successful  so-called  religious  books  of  the  day, 
Drummond's  "  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual  World," 
narrows  the  spiritual  world  to  the  creed  of  the  Scotch 
Presbyterian  church.  Unless  you  believe  this  creed, 
you  are  separated  from  the  spiritual  world  by  the 
same  gulf  that  separates  the  organic  from  the  inor 
ganic  ;  and  in  the  tone  of  the  press  and  pulpit  of 
the  churches  generally  there  is  an  assumption  of 
usufruct  of  spiritual  and  divine  things.  In  the 
creed  of  the  true-blue  Calvinistic  church  it  is  held 
that  a  person  can  have  no  insight  into  spiritual 
things  till  his  eyes  are  specially  opened  by  an  act 
of  divine  grace.  Then  things  become  straight  and 
plain  to  him  which  before  were  dark  and  crooked. 
This  may  be  so,  but  I  trust  the  good  brethren  will 


216  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

forgive  me  if  I  say  this  view  represents  a  phase  of 
thought  which  is  transient  and  limited,  and  which 
is  certainly  passing  away.  It  is  one  phase  of  Puri 
tanism,  and  is  fading  out  with  the  rest.  How  can 
we  deny  spiritual  insight,  spiritual-mindedness,  or 
faith,  hope,  charity,  to  such  pagans  as  Plato,  So 
crates,  Marcus  Aurelius,  or  Plutarch,  or  to  Seneca  ? 
or,  in  our  own  time  and  country,  to  such  a  man  as 
Emerson,  —  a  man,  as  it  seems  to  me,  of  the  most 
heroic  spiritual  fibre  ?  "  But  Esaias  is  very  bold, 
and  saith,  I  was  found  of  them  that  sought  me  not, 
I  was  made  manifest  unto  them  that  asked  not  after 
me."  Think  you  the  man  of  science  does  not  also 
find  God  ?  that  Huxley  and  Darwin  and  Tyndall 
do  not  find  God,  though  they  may  hesitate  to  use 
that  name  ?  Whoever  finds  truth  finds  God,  doec 
he  not  ?  whoever  loves  truth  loves  God  ?  "  He 
judged  the  cause  of  the  poor  and  the  needy :  was 
not  this  to  know  me  ?  saith  the  Lord." 

Has  conversion,  then,  no  power  to  open  the  eyes  ? 
The  old-fashioned  conversion  of  our  fathers  and 
mothers  was  an  emotional,  not  an  intellectual  pro 
cess  ;  it  was  an  upheaval  of  the  conscience  and  not 
a  turning  over  of  the  mind,  and  is  impossible  to  most 
natures.  It  did  not  open  the  eyes,  but  it  enlisted 
the  heart  and  the  feelings ;  it  begat  love.  Love  is 
not  sharp-sighted,  but  it  is  creative ;  it  finds  mean 
ing  and  value  which  an  outsider  does  not  find.  A 
man  who  loves  his  church  and  its  sacraments  and 
ceremonies  finds  a  significance  and  an  importance 
in  them  which  another  does  not.  But  it  is  to  be 


SPIRITUAL  INSIGHT  OF  MATTHEW  ARNOLD      217 

remembered  that  these  things  are  relative  and  per 
sonal,  and  not  absolute  and  universal.  It  is  love 
which  creates  them,  our  own  heightened  feelings 
which  imparts  them.  They  are  subjective  phenom 
ena,  and  not  objective  realities.  The  creed  of  our 
church  is  not  any  more  true  that  we  love  it  and 
find  it  full  of  meaning  and  beauty.  There  is  but  one 
truth-tester,  and  that  is  the  impartial,  impersonal 
intellect. 

In  all  his  criticism  Arnold  aimed  at  disinterested 
ness.  He  does  not  appear  as  an  advocate  before  a 
jury  whose  passions  and  prejudices  are  to  be  moved, 
but  as  a  pleader  before  the  judges  in  the  highest 
court,  whose  reason  is  to  be  convinced.  Religion 
as  a  sentiment,  or  as  an  emotion  of  his  heart,  is  not 
often  present  in  his  prose  writings,  but  religion  as 
a  conviction  of  his  intellect  is.  He  states  the  law, 
and  states  it  with  just  as  much  spiritual  insight  as 
St.  Paul  does,  but  not  with  the  same  force  of  con 
viction,  because  with  less  passion.  Paul  is  a  pas 
sionate  pleader  and  denunciator  j  his  words  melt  and 
burn :  — 

"  For  I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  in 
ward  man  :  but  I  see  another  law  in  my  members, 
warring  against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing 
me  into  captivity  to  the  law  of  sin  which  is  in  my 
members.  0  wretched  man  that  I  am  !  who  shall 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  " 

See  how  dispassionately  Arnold  states  the  same 
law  :  — 

"As  man  advances  in  his  development  he  be- 


218  THE   LIGHT   OF  DAY 

comes  aware  of  two  lives,  one  permanent  and  imper 
sonal,  the  other  transient  and  bound  to  our  contrasted 
self ;  he  becomes  aware  of  two  selves,  one  higher  and 
real,  the  other  inferior  and  apparent ;  and  that  the 
instinct  in  him  truly  to  live,  the  desire  for  happi 
ness,  is  served  by  following  the  first  self  and  not 
the  second." 

It  is  to  be  remembered  of  Matthew  Arnold  that 
his  culture,  his  temper,  and  his  method  were  essen 
tially  classical,  Greek ;  that  he  looked  with  suspicion 
upon  all  disproportionate  mental  or  spiritual  devel 
opment,  that  he  would  have  the  man  equally  de 
veloped  on  all  sides  of  his  nature,  and  that  he  says 
in  one  of  his  poems  that  he  owed  "  special  thanks  " 
to  the  "  even-balanced  "  soul  of  the  old  Greek  bard, 
whose  ideal  he  seems  to  have  had  ever  before  him, 

"  Who  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole." 


XVI 

THE   DIVINE    SHIP 

T~T  is  well  to  stop  our  star-gazing  occasionally  and 
-•-  consider  the  ground  under  our  feet.  May  be  it 
is  celestial,  too  ;  may  be  this  brown,  sun-tanned,  sin- 
stained  earth  is  a  sister  to  the  morning  and  the 
evening  star.  If  it  should  turn  out  to  be  so,  it 
seems  to  me  we  have  many  things  to  learn  over 
again,  —  we  must  tear  down  and  build  larger. 

No  wonder  the  old  fathers  resisted  the  notion 
that  the  earth  was  round  and  turned  round !  It  was 
not  the  mill-ponds  that  were  in  danger  of  spilling 
out  so  much  as  certain  creeds  and  theories.  Once 
set  the  earth  afloat  and  what  have  you  not  unloosed  ? 
Admit  that  the  notch  in  the  mountain  really  does 
not  determine  where  the  sun  shall  rise,  —  or,  further, 
that  this  great  palpable  fact,  which  our  senses  so 
overwhelmingly  affirm,  of  the  passage  of  the  sun 
from  east  to  west  over  the  earth,  is  no  fact  at  all, 
but  an  illusion,  —  that  it  is  the  solid  ground  beneath 
our  feet  that  is  slipping  away,  and  not  the  sun  up 
there,  —  and  you  have  admitted  a  principle  that 
makes  your  creeds  and  philosophies  whirl  like  soap- 
bubbles.  Your  creeds  and  philosophies  are  based  on 
a  different  fact,  proceed  from  different  premises, 
and  are  totally  inadequate  to  face  such  a  deduction. 


220  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

It  is  a  source  of  wonder  to  me  how  modern  theo 
logy  has  stood  for  so  long  a  time  the  test  of  astro 
nomy,  —  in  fact,  has  harnessed  astronomy  into  its 
service.  It  is  not  that  the  stars  are  less  convincing, 
but  that  men  are  harder  to  convince  than  I  was  will 
ing  to  believe.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  how  this 
fantastic  conception  of  things  would  fall  before  the 
standard  of  him  who  had  got  even  the  insects  or  the 
minutest  fact  of  nature.  How,  then,  can  it  prevail 
before  him  whose  standard  is  the  globe,  —  "  round, 
rolling,  compact,"  —  with  no  possible  failures,  of  no 
conceivable  age,  obeying  no  namable  rule  or  method, 
yet  above  all  rule  and  method,  —  purely  an  inspira 
tion,  whose  vast  beauty  and  perfection  the  highest 
speech  can  only  edge  ? 

Our  proudest  statements  go  but  a  little  way  —  at 
most  but  recognize  this  as  up,  that  as  down,  that 
as  east,  this  as  west,  but  absolutely,  without  refer 
ence  to  point  or  place  which  way  is  east  and  which 
way  west  ?  Leave  the  earth  behind  you  as  a  speck 
in  the  sky,  and  which  way  is  up,  which  down  ?  Now 
where  is  your  immutable  fact  ?  Enlarge  your  sphere 
of  observation  a  little,  take  into  account  the  circle, 
instead  of  the  fragment  of  an  arc,  and  how  relative 
and  puerile  your  boasted  achievements  seem  !  It  is 
as  if  sight  were  added  after  groping  with  the  hands. 

Are  the  great  facts  of  science,  then,  only  so  many 
formulae,  —  have  they  no  moral  application  ?  Does 
it  make  no  difference  in  your  views  of  God,  of  the 
soul  and  immortality,  whether  the  earth  is  all  or 
whether  there  are  other  earths,  whether  it  is  round 


THE   DIVINE   SHIP  221 

or  flat,  whether  it  moves  or  remains  at  rest  ?  Do  you 
reason  and  speculate  the  same  under  Kepler's  laws 
as  under  Ptolemy's  spheres  ? 

What  a  tremendous  assurance  is  that  simple  asser 
tion  of  the  astronomer  that  the  earth  is  a  star  !  How 
it  satisfies  one,  infinitely  more  than  all  preaching, 
theories,  or  speculations  whatever !  What  does  it 
not  settle  ?  I  will  not  doubt  or  fear  any  longer.  This 
day  I  have  a  new  faith.  Let  the  preacher  preach, 
let  the  theorists  contend,  let  the  old  incessant  war 
fare  go  on,  —  the  sky  covers  all,  and  the  elements 
administer  to  all  the  same,  and,  undisturbed,  the 
"  divine  ship  sails  the  divine  sea." 

Bead  correctly  the  moral  of  the  solar  system,  —  of 
this  harmony,  this  balance,  this  compensation,  and 
there  is  no  deeper  lesson  to  be  learned.  Follow  out 
this  elemental  form  for  which  the  earth  stands  — 
the  curve  or  sphere  —  and  you  shall  solve  all  prob 
lems,  reconcile  all  philosophies,  mend  all  breaks,  and 
make  the  commonest  fact  illustrious.  You  have  been 
pronouncing  judgment  now  from  this  standpoint, 
now  from  that,  shifting  and  changing  to  meet  the 
facts,  —  never  entire  master  of  the  situation. 

Now  you  have  reached  the  standpoint  from  which 
all  may  be  spoken,  —  all  theories,  literatures,  arts, 
religions,  —  tried  and  judged.  This  principle  shows 
all  as  parts  of  one  plan,  and  makes  every  fact  signif 
icant.  Can  there  be  any  failure  or  miscarriage  now  ? 
Because  the  circle  is  emblematical  of  nature  is  why 
nature  will  not  be  reduced  to  a  point.  We  cannot 
put  our  hand  upon  this  or  that  and  say,  "  Here  is 


222  THE   LIGHT  OF  DAY 

what  it  is  all  for,  —  this  is  the  end  of  the  world. " 
There  is  no  end  or  beginning,  and  can  be  none. 
Tried  anywhere,  nature  presents  the  same  front. 
Every  part  is  strong  by  the  strength  of  the  whole. 
Can  you  prostrate  a  sphere  ?  Every  point  on  its 
surface  is  a  centre.  So  everywhere.  The  earth,  we 
say,  is  forever  falling  into  the  sun  and  forever  ceas 
ing  to  fall ;  indicating  all  directions  and  going  no 
direction  ;  every  point  at  the  top,  and  yet  no  one 
point  at  the  top,  etc.  Is  this  a  flat  contradiction  ? 
Very  well,  this  is  nature,  —  this  is  the  lesson  the 
earth  teaches,  and  it  satisfies.  What  is  time  ?  It  is 
not  the  present  moment ;  before  you  can  say  "  Now," 
it  is  gone ;  and  it  is  not  the  next  moment,  because 
that  is  not.  Yet  time  is.  So  with  the  old  sophists' 
puzzle  that  motion  is  impossible,  because  a  body  can 
not  move  where  it  is,  nor  where  it  is  not.  Life  is 
as  impossible  of  explanation,  —  it  is  neither  the  one 
thing  nor  the  other,  but  a  constant  becoming.  To 
this  principle  the  last  analysis  brings  you,  and  the 
soul  sees  that  the  final  explanation  can  never  be 
made,  —  that  there  is  no  final  explanation.  With 
this  sight  comes  perfect  faith.  When  the  mind  sees 
that  the  universe  is  self-sustained,  yea,  stronger  than 
this,  that  there  is  no  condition  or  possibility  of  the 
opposite  thought,  what  more  can  be  said  ?  Now 
you  may  chant  "  unmitigated  adoration."  Now  you 
may  praise  with  electric  voice :  — 

"  Open  mouth  of  my  soul,  uttering  gladness, 
Eyes  of  my  soul,  seeing  perfection, 
Natural  life  of  me,  faithfully  praising  things, 
Corroborating  forever  the  triumph  of  things. 


THE   DIVINE   SHIP  223 

"Illustrious  every  one! 

Illustrious  what  we  name  space — sphere  of  unnumbered  spirits, 

Illustrious  the  mystery  of  motion,  in  all  beings,  even  the  tiniest 

insect, 

Illustrious  the  attribute  of  speech  —  the  senses  —  the  body, 
Illustrious  the  passing  light!    Illustrious  the  pale  reflection  of 

the  moon  in  the  western  sky ! 
Illustrious  whatever  I  see,  or  hear,  or  touch,  to  the  last." 

Do  we  realize  the  amazing  grandeur  and  beauty  of 
the  voyage  we  are  making,  —  all  the  more  grand  and 
beautiful  because  on  so  large  a  scale  and  in  so  vast 
an  orbit  that  none  suspect  it,  none  witness  it ;  speed 
ing  with  more  than  the  speed  of  a  rifle-bullet,  and 
the  fact  patent  only  to  the  imagination,  not  to  the 
senses  ?  In  the  heavens,  among  the  stars,  sepa 
rated  from  the  nearest  by  measureless  space,  yet 
related  to  the  farthest  by  the  closest  ties,  upheld  and 
nourished  by  a  power  so  vast  that  nothing  can  mea 
sure  it,  yet  so  subtle  that  not  a  hair  loses  its  place, 
the  morning  or  the  evening  star  no  more  favored,  no 
more  divine,  these  ways  the  eternal  ways,  the  hea 
venly  ways,  the  immutable  ways,  —  what  more  would 
we  have  !  Is  it  all  a  sham  and  a  failure,  then,  —  is 
it  all  foulness  and  sin  ? 

Incorruptible  and  undefiled,  —  the  soil  under  foot 
as  well  as  the  sky  overhead.  It  fills  me  with  awe 
when  I  think  how  vital  and  alive  the  world  is ; 
how  the  water  forever  cleanses  itself ;  how  the  air 
forever  cleanses  itself,  and  the  ground  forever 
cleanses  itself,  —  how  the  sorting,  sifting,  distrib 
uting  process,  no  atom  missing  or  losing  its  place, 
goes  on  forever  and  ever !  Perpetual  renewal  and 
promotion !  — 


224  THE   LIGHT   OF   DAY 

"  Now  I  am  terrified  at  the  Earth!  it  is  that  calm  and  patient, 

It  grows  such  sweet  things  out  of  such  corruptions, 

It  turns  harmless  and  stainless  on  its  axis,  with  such  endless  sue* 

cession  of  diseased  corpses, 

It  distills  such  exquisite  winds  out  of  such  infused  fetor, 
It  renews,  with  such  unwitting  looks,  its  prodigal,  annual,  sump 
tuous  crops, 

It  gives  such  divine  materials  to  men,  and  accepts  such  leavings 
from  them  at  last." 

Does  this  power  with  which  I  move  my  arm  be 
gin  and  end  in  myself  ?  On  the  contrary,  is  it  not 
the  same  or  a  part  of  that  which  holds  the  stars  and 
the  planets  in  their  places  ?  In  performing  the 
meanest  act,  do  I  not  draw  upon  the  vast  force  with 
which  the  universe  is  held  together  ?  Can  any 
thing  transpire  of  which  the  Whole  does  not  take 
cognizance  ?  "  Not  a  hawthorn  blooms,"  says  Victor 
Hugo,  "  but  is  felt  at  the  stars,  —  not  a  pebble  drops 
but  sends  pulsations  to  the  sun."  Be  assured  we  are 
not  detached,  cut  off,  by  all  these  billions  of  miles 
of  space,  but  still  as  close  and  dependent  as  the  fruit 
that  hangs  to  the  branch. 

I  cannot  tell  what  the  simple  apparition  of  the 
earth  and  sky  mean  to  me ;  I  think  at  rare  intervals 
one  sees  that  they  have  an  immense  spiritual  mean 
ing,  altogether  unspeakable,  and  that  they  are  the 
great  helps,  after  all.  In  the  open  air  I  know  what 
the  poet  means  when  he  swears  he  will  never  men 
tion  love  again  inside  of  a  house,  and  that  he  will 
follow  up  these  continual  lessons  of  the  earth,  air, 
sky,  water,  —  declaring  at  the  outset  that  he  will 
make  the  poems  of  materials,  for  only  thus  does  he 
hope  to  attain  to  the  spiritual. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

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